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TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE. By w\. Lampton. THE fact that 1 was Arthur Rutled/e Darlington, a rising young attorney and the son of Judge Darlington, me Ca*sar of our rural Rome, had just tlie slightest tendency to make me tread lightly on the earth, lest I might tip it up when I walked forth to my daily duties. Nor was I to blame for this feeling of argeness, for when a body is anybody in a small town he is somebody. We had a pleasant society in our town, rather mixed, as it always is in small towns, but still quite attractive, and, on the whole, of a higher intelligence than that of larger places, and to say that I was a shining light in the circle was putting it mildly. I was quite sure I had the pick of the town in the matter of its rosebud garden of girls, and upon mature deliberation I select ed, as that one most befitting my station and future, Deborah Gale, the daughter of the banker. The Gales had been residents of our town for only three years, having come from the adjoining county, and for that number of years I had been devoting myself to her. And this three years was the one circum stance that made me think sometimes that perhaps 1 was not all my fancy painted me, for Deborah had not yet accepted me, al though she had been asked to do so on an average of about once a month. To put the matter plainly, I was in love with Deborah. To make my condition more deplorable, I had reason to believe Deborah loved an other. And this is Cupid’s crown of sor rows. « * u h a—Ttrr To add still more to the gloom, my rival was a ■ clerk in my father’s office. 7^ A nice enough fellow, _ perhaps, but merely a clerk, while I was a rising young attorney and the son and heir of Judge Darlington. And, still worse, his is name was John Smith. “Deborah,” I said to j her one beautiful moon- J light night in June, when lovers’ hearts should be in attune, “will you be my wife?” « “Oh, Arthur,” she sob- ff bed, for she really liked * me, “ how can I ?” ? “ Easy enough,” I re sponded. “Say ‘Yes’ and the preacher will do ✓ the rest.” This was no way for a ^ man in love to be talking, but I was growing des- *7 perate. “J don’t mean that,” ^ she still sobbed, “but I don’t love you.” “You will, after a ’ while,” I urged. “ No, no, it cannot . be. ^ “It can be,” I asserted, positively, “and only one thing can prevent it. Do you love some other man, Deborah?” “ Don’t ask me, Arthur. Don’t ask me,” she answered, still sobbing. I was about to make an appropriate reply, when Mr. John Smith came through the front gate and slowly approached the spot where we were sitting on the piazza. “ Here comes the explanation of the entire affair, Miss Gale,” I said, with extreme formality, “and I shall leave you with it and never trouble you again. Pardon my stupiditv. I should have understood before and saved both of us much pain.” As I rose to go, he came up the steps and insisted upon mv remaining. So did Miss Gale, and the cordiality of her greeting to him made me wonder where the mischief she had so suddenly secreted the large quantity of sobs she had only a moment before been furnishing me with. It was further evidence of woman’s dupii citv, and I contrived to repress my feelings. It was all I could do, though, to keep from knocking Smith’s head clean off his shoulders and leave his headless trunk as an ornament on Miss Gale’s piazza. I was glad afterward that I did not. But I was not to be utterly deprived of my revenge, and as I left Smith and Miss Gale laughing and talking on the field of my defeat, I made up what little mind I had left to wait for Smith and have it out with him. In other words, I proposed to myself to give Mr. Smith the champion thrashing of his life and let Miss Gale have the wreck. The Gales lived a mile from town and part of the way was through a bit of com mon with a board fence on one side of the road. When I reached this fence I climbed up on it and made myself as comfortable as I could to wait for Smith. I sat there on the fence, thinking, think ing, thinking, and the more I thought, the "'worse I felt, until if Smith had come along at that moment, I can’t say what would have happened to him. But he did not come. Instead, I went to sleep on the fence and fell off with a dull thud that jolted me from the cradle to the grave It was about midnight when Smith ap peared and I watched him from where I sat on the ground under the fence. A girl might deceive me, but a fence couldn’t. At least, not after the first time. That’s why 1 didn’t trust myself on it again. I looked at Smith as a cat might look at an unsuspecting mouse, and fairly gloated over him. I had gloated fully a minute, when I stepped out and confronted him. “ Hello, Arthur,” he exclaimed, in startled surprise, 4 what are you doing here?” “I’ll be doing you in about a minute, I hissed, scarcely able to keep my hands off him, thought I felt that it was only fair to give him a chance. “Well,” he said, letting his hands drop listlessly at his side, “here I am. Go ahead.’ His tones struck me and I took a second look at his face. It looked worse than l felt. with you? I am here to give you a licking, but I don’t want to tight a sick man.” “ What do you want to lick me for?” he said, in a sepulchral voice that scared me. “ Because,” 1 said, regaining my formal ity, “because, sir, you have stolen that from me which I prize more highly than I do my life, and 1 cannot submit to it tamely.” “What have I stolen?” he asked, plead inglv. “The only being on earth that I cared for.” I felt that I was growing hysterical and thought that I would have to lick him any how, just to give vent to my feelings. “Miss Gale, do you mean?” he asked, feeblv. “Yes; you know very well whom I mean,” and I was nervously waiting to hit him a good, hard one. He waited a niuufte before speaking and I could hear him gulping every now and then as if he were choking. “ If that’s all,” he gasped, at last, “ you'll have to go over into the next county and lick Frank Hastings. And, Arthur,” he went on, bracing up strong and beginning to paw the ground, “by thunder, if you want me to go along I’ll do it, and we won’t leave enough of the chump to hold a cor oner’s inquest on.” T he reaction was so strong that I collap sed and went down in a heap; but Smith brought me around pretty soon, and there, in the sweet, serene light of the midnight moon. Smith and I swore a solemn oath that neither of us would ever court another girl until we had assurances from herself and a majority of her family and friends that we were sure of getting her. The Dr. Slocum System ot Treatment Presents a Positive Cure for Humanity's Greatest Foe. HERE IS HEALTH These l:our New Preparations com prise a complete new treatment tor Con sumption and nearly all the ills of life. 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