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Newspaper Page Text
rijjjmsmmmmmmmmmmmmmm THE WAR ORDER By Elizabeth Schoen Cobb (Copyright by W. G. Chapman.) "Be fair, young man. Myrtle is too young to know-her own mind. Another thing! Of course, my wife and myself must look out for her future welfare. Your cousin, Allen Bruce, preceded you by a day with the same proposition as your own." Ralph Dering looked dismayed and disappointed. His was too frank and ingenuous a nature, however, to cherish either dejection or dislike. "And you told him, Mr. Owens?" ventured Ralph. "Just what I am going to tell you. Both of you profess to love my daughter and she is certainly a friend to both. You two "have just inherited a fair start in life from your dead un cle. Keep away from Myrtle for a year. Then let us see who has made the best use of his capital." "Yes, that's fair," acceded Ralph, and went his way, but once out of sight of the house that help the only girl in the world he loved, Ralph ut tered a short, bitter laugh. "I wonder if Mr. Owens knows of the vast disparity between what Cousin Allen has inherited and what I have been given." There was, indeed, a contrast To his favorite nephew dead John Gor don had willed a mansion, some se curities and a modest little fortune in cash. To Ralph the bequest was Lonely island. A grim expression crossed the face of Ralph as he repeated the weird name. The island itself carried out the somberness of the situation. Lonely island was a 300-acre patch in the middle of the swift rolling riv e It had been in the family for 50 years and during that period had done nothing but grow willows on its swampy end and a noble grove of walnut trees on the other half. No one had ever dreamed of leasing, buying or occupying it. But Ralph resolved now to malte his home upon it. Was it not prop erty and his own? By diligence might he not wrest some return for his hard work? The prize, Myrtle, seemed far enough away, for Allen Bruce had a decide'd advantage over him. Still he must live, he must make a beginning, and the end of a month saw a rude but comfortable cagin erected at the extreme north end of Lonely island. At the end of "I Find It Hard to Occupy Myself." another month Ralph had cleared a five-acre patch of its underbrush pre paratory to doing some real farming the next season. One day he received a visit i It was from a man familiarly known as Quaker Wilson. The latter was an intensely religious and industrious man, an old bachelor, odd in some of his ideas, but thoroughly honest and dependable. "Dering," he said, in his quaint, --rmhmmMmimmt