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I guess I'd better not," replied Lois, Her hands were folded in her lap quietly,

in a trembling voice.

"It's real cool in there." "I'm afraid I'd better not." "Well," said Francis, of course I won't tease you if you don't want to." He tried to make his tone quite unconcerned and to smile. He was passing on, but Lois spoke.

"I might go in there just a minute," she said.

Francis turned quickly, his face lighted up. They walked along together to the cemetery gate, he opened it, and they entered and passed slowly down the drive

way.

The yard was largely overhung by ever green trees, which held in their boughs cool masses of blue gloom. It was cool there, as Francis had said, although it was quite a warm day. The flowers on the sunny graves hung low, unless they had been freshly tended, when they stood erect in dark circles. Some of the old uncared-for graves were covered with rank growths of grass and weeds, which seemed fairly instinct with merry life this summer afternoon. Crickets and cicadas thrilled through them; now and then a bird flew

up.

It was like a resurrection stir. "Let's go where we went that first day," said Francis; "it's always pleasant there on the bank."

Lois followed him without a word. They sat down on the grass at the edge of the terrace, and a cool breeze came in their faces from over the great hollow of the meadows below. The grass on them had been cut short, and now had dried and turned a rosy color in the sun. The two kept their eyes turned away from each other, and looked down into the meadow as into the rosy hollow of a cup; but they seemed to see each other's faces there.

"It's cool here, isn't it?" said Francis. "Real cool."

"It always is on the hottest day. There is always a breeze here, if there isn't anywhere else."

Francis's words were casual, but his voice was unsteady with a tender tone that seemed to overweight it.

Lois seemed to hear only this tone, and not the words. It was one of the primitive tones that came before any language was made, and related to the first necessities of man. Suddenly she had ears for that only. She did not say anything.

but her fingers tingled.

"Lois," Francis began; then he stopped. Lois did not look up.

"See here, Lois," he went on, “I don't know as there is much use in my saying anything. You've hardly noticed me lately. There was one spell when I thought maybe- But- Well, I'm going to ask you, and have it over with one way or the other. Lois, do you thinkwell, do you feel as if you could ever— marry me some time?"

Lois dropped her head down on her hands.

"Now don't you go to feeling bad if you can't," said Francis. "It won't be your fault. But if you'd just tell me, Lois."

Lois did not speak.

"If you'd just tell me one way or the other, Lois."

"I can't.

I can't anyway!" cried Lois then, with a great sob.

"Well, if you can't, don't cry, little girl. There's nothing to cry about. I can stand it. All the trouble is, it does seem to me that I could take care of you better than any other fellow on earth, but maybe that's my conceit, and you'll find somebody else that will do better than I. Now don't cry." Francis pulled her hat off gently, and patted her head. His face was quite white, but he tried to smile. "Don't cry, dear," he said again. "It was nothing you could help. I didn't much suppose you liked me. There's nothing much in me to like. I'm an ordinary kind of a fellow."

Francis got up, and walked off a little

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River that wants you? Is that the Mrs. Field. Then she raised her voice reason?"

She shook her head. "I can't ever marry anybody," she said, and her voice was suddenly quite firm. She wiped her

eyes.

Francis sat down beside her. "Oh, Lois," he said, "you do love me, after all?"

"I can't marry you," said she. "Why not, dear?"

"I can't. You mustn't ask me why." Francis looked down at her half laughing. "Some dreadful obstacle in the way?"

She nodded solemnly.

Francis put his arm around her. "Oh, my dear," he said, "don't you know obstacles go for nothing, if you do like me, after all? Wait a little and you'll find out. Oh, Lois, are you sure you do like me? You are so pretty."

"I can't," repeated Lois, trembling. "Suppose this obstacle were removed, dear, you would then?"

"It never can be."

Yes, of

"But if it were, you would? course you would. Then I shall remove it, you depend upon it, I shall, dear. Lois, I liked you the minute I saw you, and it's terribly conceited, but I do believe you liked me a little. Dear, if it ever can be, I'll take care of you all your life."

The two sat there together, and the long summer afternoon passed humming and singing with bees and birds, and breathing sweetly through the pine branches. They themselves were as a fixed heart of love in the midst of it, and all around them in their graves lay the dead who had known and gone beyond it all, but nobody could tell if they had forgotten.

CHAPTER X.

WHEN Lois left home that afternoon her mother had been in her bedroom changing her dress. When she came out she had on her best black dress, her black shawl and gloves, and her best bonnet. The three women stared at her.

She stood before them a second

without speaking. The strange look, for which Lois had watched her face, had appeared.

"Why, what is the matter, Mis' Field?" cried Mrs. Babcock. "Where be you goin'?"

"I've

suddenly. "I've got something to say to
all of you before I go," said she.
been deceivin' you, an' everybody here
in Elliot. When I came down here, they
all took me for my sister, Esther Max-
well, an' I let them think so. They've
all called me Esther Maxwell here.
That's how I got the money. Old Mr.
Maxwell left it to Flora Maxwell if my
sister didn't outlive him. I shouldn't
have had a cent. I stole it. I thought
my daughter would die if we didn't have
it, an' get away from Green River; but
that wa'n't any excuse. Edward Max-

well had that fifteen hundred dollars of
my husband's, an' I never had a cent of it;
but that wa'n't any excuse. I thought
I'd jest stay here an' carry it out till I
got the money back; but that wa'n't any
excuse. I ain't spent a cent of the
money; it's all put away just as it was
paid in, in a sugar-bowl in the china-
closet; but that ain't any excuse. I took
it on myself to do justice instead of the
Lord, an' that ain't for any human bein'
to do. I ain't Esther Maxwell. I'm
brought up short. I ain't Esther Max-
well!" Her voice arose to a stern shriek.

The three women stared at her, then at each other. Their faces were white. Amanda was catching her breath in faint gasps. Jane Field rushed out of the room. The door closed heavily after her.

Three wild, pale faces huddled together in a window watched her out of the yard. Mrs. Babcock called weakly after her to come back, but she kept on. She went out of the yard and down the street. At the first house she stopped, went up to the door and rang the bell. When a woman answered her ring, she looked at her and said, "I ain't Esther Maxwell!" Then she turned and went down the walk between the rows of marigolds and asters, and the woman stood staring after her for a minute, then ran in, and the windows filled with wondering faces.

Jane Field stopped at the next house with the same message. After she left, a woman pelted across the yard in a panic to compare notes with her neighbors. She kept on down the street, and she stopped at every door and said, “I ain't Esther Maxwell."

Now and then somebody tried to delay her to question her and obtain an expla"I'm goin' out a little ways," replied nation, but she broke away. There was

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"I AIN'T ESTHER MAXWELL.' HER VOICE AROSE TO A STERN SHRIEK."

about her a terrible mental impetus which intimidated. People stood instinctively out of her way, as before some rushing force which might overwhelm them.

Daniel Tuxbury followed her out to the street; then he fell back. Mrs. Jane Maxwell caught hold of her dress, but she let go, and leaned trembling over her iron gate looking after the relentless black figure speeding to the next door.

She went on and on, all the summer afternoon, and canvassed the little village with her remorse and confession of crime. Finally the four words which she said at the doors seemed almost involuntary. They became her one natural note, the expression of her whole life. It was as if she had never said any others. At last, going along the street, she repeated them to everybody she met. Some she had told before, but she did not know it. She said them to a little girl in a white frock, with her hair freshly curled, carrying a doll, and she ran away crying with fright. She said them to three barefooted boys loping along in the dust, with berry-pails, and they laughed, and turned around and mocked her, calling the words after her. When she went up the path to the Maxwell house, she said them where the shadow of a pine-tree fell darkly in front of her like the shadow of a man. She said them when she stood before the door of the house whose hospitality she had usurped. There was a little crowd at her heels, but she did not notice them until she was entering the door. Then she said the words over to them: "I ain't Esther Maxwell."

She entered the sitting-room, the people following. There were her three old friends and neighbors, the minister and his wife, Daniel Tuxbury, his sister and her daughter, Mrs. Jane Maxwell and her daughter, and her own Lois. She faced them all, and said it again: "I ain't Esther Maxwell."

The lawyer jerked himself forward, his face was twitching. This woman's mind is affected," he declared, with loud importance. "She is Esther Maxwell. I will swear to it in any court. I recognize her, and I never forget a face."

"I ain't Esther Maxwell," said Jane Field, in her voice that was as remorseless and conclusive as fate.

Lois pressed forward and clung to her. "Mother!" she moaned; "mother!"

Then for once her mother varied her set speech. "Lois wan't to blame," she said; “I want you to know it, all of you. Lois wa'n't to blame. She didn't know until after I'd done it. She wanted to tell, but I told her they'd put me in prison. Lois wa'n't to blame. I ain't Esther Maxwell."

"Oh, mother, don't, don't!" Lois sobbed. She hung about her mother's neck, and pressed her lips to that pale wrinkled face, where wrinkles seemed now to be laid in stone. Not a muscle of Jane Field's face changed. She kept repeating at intervals, in precisely the same tone, her terrible under-chord to all the excitement about her: "I ain't Esther Maxwell."

Some of the women were crying. Amanda Pratt sat sewing fast, with her mouth set. She clung to her familiar needle as if it were a rope to save her from destruction. Francis Arms had come in, and stood close to Lois and her mother.

Suddenly Jane Maxwell spoke. She was pale, and her head-dress was askew. "I call this pretty work," said she.

"I

Then Mrs. Babcock faced her. should call it pretty work for somebody else besides poor Mis' Field," she cried. "I'd like to know what business your . folks had takin' her money an' keepin' it. She wa'n't goin' to take any more than belonged to her, an' she had a perfect right to, accordin' to my way of thinkin'."

Mrs. Maxwell gasped. Flora laid her hand on her arm when she tried to speak again.

"I'm goin' to tell her how I've been without a decent dress, an' how I've been luggin' my own things out of this house, an' now I've got to lug 'em all back again," she whispered, defiantly.

"Mother, you keep still," said Flora.

Mrs. Green went across the room and put her arm around Lois, standing by her mother. "Let's you an' me get her in her bedroom, an' have her lay down on the bed, an' try an' quiet her," she whispered. "She's all unstrung. Mebbe she'll be better."

Mrs. Field at once turned towards her. I ain't Esther Maxwell," said she.

"Oh, Mis' Field! oh, poor woman! it ain't for us to judge you," returned Mrs. Green, in her tender, inexpressibly solemn voice. "Come, Lois."

"Yes, that'll be a good plan," chimed in Mrs. Babcock. "She'd better go in her

bedroom where it's quiet, or she'll wind soothing arguments, but she kept on her

up with a fever. There's too many folks here."

"I wonder if some of my currant wine wouldn't be good for her?" said Mrs. Jane Maxwell, with an air of irrepressible virtue.

"She don't want none of your currant wine," rejoined Mrs. Babcock, fiercely. "She's suffered enough by your family." "I guess you needn't be so mighty smart," returned Mrs. Maxwell, jerking her arm away from Flora. "I dun know of anything she's suffered. I should think Flora an' me had been the ones to suffer, an' now we sha'n't never go to law, nor make any fuss about it. I ain't goin' to stay here an' be talked to so any longer if I know, especially by folks that ain't got any business meddlin' with it, anyway. I suppose this is my daughter's house, an' I've got a perfect right in it, but I'm a-goin'."

Mrs. Jane Maxwell went out, her ribbons and silken draperies fluttering as if her own indignation were a wind, but Flora staid.

The women led Jane Field into her little bedroom, took off her bonnet and shawl and dress as if she were dead, and made her lie down. They bathed her head with camphor, they plied her with

one strain. She was singularly docile in all but that. Mrs. Green dropped on her knees beside the bed and prayed. When she said amen, Jane Field called out her confession as if in the ear of God. They sent for the doctor, and he gave her a soothing draught, and she slept. The women watched with her, as ever and anon she stirred and murmured in her sleep, "I ain't Esther Maxwell." And she said it when she first awoke in the morning.

"She's sayin' it now," whispered Mrs. Babcock to Mrs. Green, and I believe she'll say it her whole life."

And Jane Field did. The stern will of the New England woman had warped her whole nature into one groove. Gradually she seemed more like herself, and her mind was in other respects apparently clear, but never did she meet a stranger unless she said for greeting, "I ain't Esther Maxwell."

And she said it to her own daughter on her wedding-day, when she came in her white dress from the minister's with Francis. The new joy in Lois's face affected her like the face of a stranger, and she turned on her and said, "I ain't Esther Maxwell."

THE END.

NATHANIEL J. WYETH, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR OREGON.*

BY JOHN A. WYETH, M.D.

N 1540 the eyes of civilized man first that king of theirs, Charles V., under

and Ferrer, sailing under the Spanish flag, coasted along until they reached as high as Cape Blanco, 43° north latitude, which Cape Blanco, in the year of our Lord 1892, is in Curry County, Oregon, and only a few miles north of the California line.

If Captains Cabrillo and Ferrer thrilled with enthusiasm in contemplating the possibilities of this portion of the rim of the North American continent, they successfully concealed it in their report to

For many data in this article the author is in debted to the following sources: History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clarke; Washington Irving's Astoria; the same author's Bonneville; Oregon, by William Barrows, in the "American Commonwealth Series"; Oregon: a Short History of a Long Journey, by John B. Wyeth; the Reports from the Census Bureau in Washington City.

pillaged Mexico,

zarro robbed Peru, and Almagro carried back to Spain all that was portable of Chili, for nearly two hundred years elapsed before another white man gazed upon it! Or perhaps Charles was too busy to settle Oregon then, since he had settlements of a bloody kind with Francis I. of France, with Germany, the Netherlands, Tunis, Algiers, and a single round with his Holiness, Pope Clement VII., spending more money in these European pastimes than his able lieutenants could steal from the murdered natives of the Western World.

Again a Spaniard, one Juan Perez, in 1774, sailed as high along the coast as the 54th degree of north latitude, discovered Nootka Sound, and theoretically planted the flag of Castile and Arragon over this

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