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Newspaper Page Text
JeSL r in. firi ;wii l.ll lUl III! III! IH III! it SUNDAY MAGAZINE for NOVEMBER 6, 1904 O M W .7 iW m ( 'W. li Li ii ,i, iii 1A O LLimUgS?i A Stroll Nt?? 7T O vl Kmramrdl WW Tl i v MRS. BARNARD took my eye and heart the moment I met her. y MAMBLEN SEARS She was beautiful beyond ques tion, so beautiful that anyone would have an instinctive desire to caress her. When we came but after supper she sat down on the edge of the piazza close to my chair, and there in the twilight, surrounded by the trees and the topography of the foot-hills of the Adirondacks, the desire getting the better of me, I almost put my arm around her neck. Fortunately, I pulled up in time; for, to tell the truth, wc had known each other for only about ten minutes. Yet when Captain Barnard left us a moment later I knew that something was going to happen. The chords of my throat instinctively drew them selves into that old ditty about being in the gloaming, and then she looked up at me with those great brown eyes. That settled it. It was only a little movement quietly to draw her head down upon my knee, and in the silence that followed I was tenderly brushing the brown hair out of her eyes, mur muring all sorts of ridiculous things when the Captain suddenly appeared on the piazza again. - We both straightened up in haste and in some natural embarrass ment, and yet, plain as the whole thing must have been, that ridiculously old man did not appear to have noticed anything at all. He was cer tainly a ridiculous man. In the first place he was seventy-four years old, gray and shaggy, and though he criti cized the President, the Philippines and Cuba, he had been to neither Havana nor Manila, nor had he ever so much as laid eyes on the chief executive of this great country, for the simple reason that he had never been seventy-five miles away from the house upon the piazza of which he now sat. It was ridiculous enough for him to criticize automobiles, for ex ample, which everybody criticizes and which never got within a hundred miles of his home, nor for that matter ever can, until some one has intelli gence enough to make a road out of the old brook bed which we had used that afternoon to the disgust of the horses and the complaints of a wagon. But of course that was nothing to his strident criticisms on the Philippines and Cuba, for everyone will agree that it is ridiculous in this country for a man to give out harsh and decisive comment on men and places which he Iip.s never seen. But the thing that made the Captain ridiculous beyond all else, as I considered it afterward, was that he took no notice of the rather unconventional atti tude of Mrs. Barnard at the moment when he appeared on that sentimental piazza. I wondered too not then, but afterward how many other masculine hands had softly brushed the hair out of those beautiful brown eyes. Instead of taking notice, the Captain turned to me and said: "Would you like to try the woodcock early in the morning?" I hesitated a moment, and then remarked in what I tried to make a nonchalant tone: "Would Mrs. Bar nard go too?" "Oh, she's thc best of us all." That was enough. When I heard that we might roam together all day through the alders I turned and looked down at her. She must have scon the joy in my eyes, for she did something that gave me one of those tortured moments of ecstasy and pain such as are felt only at rare intervals by mankind, and mostly in novels at that. She turned her beautiful face up to me, and without further comment put her foot into my lap. After the evening of sentiment, the morning of action. After the bustle of town, the calmness of the woods. It is such changes as these that make the spice of life and the health of the mind. Here this morning, for example, I awoke with a start, looked at my watch and realized that there was only a scant half-hour to dress, cat breakfast and catch the something train for the office, and then I sank back with calm relief to think over the incontrovertible fact that that train was a good two hundred fifty miles away, and that it was not to know me in several days to come. Let it start exactly at something something. Let it be delayed up the line. Let the passengers curse the or rather close to the bottomless bog, with one foot well in front, one hind leg stretched far back, and with that long, keen nose pushed forward to its utmost extent. There must be something there; and asking her to keep s.ill for a space I tried to get in there to her. But the alders were good fighters, and it be came necessary to get down on all fours and crawl along by the roots. So wc came opposite one another with not more than twenty feet between us, and somewhere in that half-dozen yards stood a tiny woodcock, bright eyed and intent, but so keen and so well matched with the brown autumn that neither human nor canine eye could see her, look as either might. Nothing except a surer sense than sight knew that she was there. "Where lc she. Lady; where, old gal?" And the Captain's burly form loomed tip behind Mrs. Barnard. Not a quiver of the body did she make, only her brown eyes brightened a bit and turned in their sockets toward her lord and master. I took another step forward and the whole scene changed. Up got Madam Woodcock between us, moving straight for me and not over a foot above the ground, the quaint, de pressed iill hanging low, the wide brown wings spread stiffly out. I do not claim to be a shot far from it. They tell me no one who can pull a trigger will say he is a shot. Still occasionally I can hit the tradi tional barn-door, and one would say that when a bird just clears the end of your barrel in plain view then might nay there really is some slight resemblance between the animate and the inanimate tradition. And yet that woodcock came at least ten feet at me straight as a die and low in under the bushes, and I I not only never fired, but.'with shame be it said, I literally dodged the little fellow for fear he would hit my head. Alter ho company again and run to their offices for fear of had passed I pulled trigger, however with what came losing nine and one-quarter minutes. nigh to being unerring aim; for the voice of the Captain I cared not a whit. I had only to turn over to look lifted itself above the murmurings that I was con out upon the forest primeval, or upon the second fiding to the alders: growth at any rate; and for all I cared or could do at "Hi, man!" cried he, "them shoto' yourn makes that moment offices and trains might slip into what holes! Duggumit. ain't you seen me.'" somebody has politely termed the Inner Kettle of the Checking my expletives to the alders, I asked one Other Place; for by seven o'clock Barnard and I were of those intelligent questions as to whether the shot seated in one of the hardy wagons that alone can stand had gone near him. the brook-bed"; of that" country, with Mrs. Barnard "Not so doggoned fur off that I couldn't hear 'em apparently satisfied to lie under the scat. So we zipping," he muttered. "Ain't you never took a drove through the wet, glistening morning out on the come-on bird afore? " fiat valley to one of the alder marshes, tied the old I told him I had been in the come-on game once or horse, anil then started forward. twice, but with birds of another feather, and always It is a strange country that these little, long-billed, in New-York: but after all his sarcasm was nothing stub-tailed woodcock prefer a marsh with the center compared to the expression in Mrs. Barnard's eyes, of the earth for its bottom and with its surface covered She could not understand it. She looked at me in bv alder-bushes that seem planned to prevent wonder, and then, feeling that she must be wrong, anyone except woodcock from getting through she ranged here and there about the place searching th;m. for the little bird, who is to this day chuckling all Mrs. Barnard, however, seemed to know the place, the way up his long bill at the manner in which he for she set to work at once when the Captain, who walked out of as bad a mess as ever woodcock got spoke to her colloquially as "Lady." requested her into. to get into the covert" and report progress. This There is little to be said in such cases for pubhea particular swale was long and narrow, and thus each tion. The guest is not inclined to interview, and the of us took a side and moved cautiously along the edge host, being of gentle breeding, even when he has of the alders ready for any sudden progress that her never traveled seventy-five miles from his home, is ladvship might report. Tlie autumn day was tip now apt to think more than he says. And as to the third and" in full' blast, cold, clear and fine. The leaves party? Well, if you happen to wish to make a good were gone, and the black alder twigs stuck up spite- impression upon her. it is more or less an unfortunate fully toward Heaven. Xow and then we wiped from episode. I could only say to myself that at the either eve a cold tear which the keen October air next shot I'd be hornswoggled if I didn't blow t he had brought there. Meantime the Captain kept whole bird into the next world! talking over things with Mrs. Barnard. She said The opportunity came soon enough. Mrs. Barnard nothing, but moved on through the covers with moved slowly on into the alders, and this time I scarcely a sound. ' followed in her wake. The bog got looser and more So we walked on, now and then giving a hoot to deceptive as we proceeded, but I paid not the slightest one another to keep the line and to be sure that we attention to the Captain's remarks about the way should not fire a couple of dozen small but penetrating these swamps had of letting one down, and so we shot into something besides the birds' feathers. Oc- wallowed on. In a few moments the water was to casionally I got a glimpse of .Mrs. Barnard's graceful the tops of my long boots, ami that uncomfortable body moving along cautiously. She made no com- sucking repeated itself regularly as one foot after ments, but was thinking hard and studying everything another came up and out under protest. Lady was that came within reach of her senses when of a just ahead jumping gaily from lump to lump of sturdy sudden she stopped ami changed to stone. It was swamp grass then she suddenly dropped to a point none of your picture points with lifted front paw again, not at all. She crouched down close to Mother Earth, It was useless for me to try to move, since the BK"v"E"i""v ' M rsBKW Wrl """""""K5H"""""""""L?"""""""""""""SHS4"if"""l"lfli"l"K9"i""H 'Captain, Am I Crazy, or Are Those Ducha? rikmrn"' -v-. Stfri.l &.: i rkigferKk:- a -.