University of South Carolina Libraries
ISPRING IS HERE I ? ? ? ? *? and you want to freshen up your ij ^ home in keeping with the season. ^ J* See my new lines of .... . ^ t ed Room Suits, Felt Mattresses, Hammocks, . ? ? Rugs and Mattings and Refrigerators. ? w ? J. - ^ 1 1 _ - . J! I Keep constantly on nanu a turn- ^ plete line of : : : : ^ 1 COFFINS and CASKETS ! and am prepared to render my < gj J services day and night. I I Im J. STACKLEY,-1 ?? THE F(R\ITIRE MAY. g ? KINGSTREE, - - S. C. ? "and j st0fe u j f! *^8" t Public buildings g X 7/Joderate Cost 8 8 Perfect dieting. | f Gasoline Engines for any purpose, & Sngman,Florence,S.C. wf ^ ?_?? ? ??^ , Ilk ParlorMarketf ?s fr ^ 5==????? ???i ^ ? Dressed Meats. Fish, Game, Poultry ? 3 Oysters, Eggs and Full Line - . - g ?^suz^C37- O-xoceries ? '" ?f HIDES MINTED HIGHES!TMARKET ? J5 . >c3 c PRICES PAID, a toe ? ? Tli.e Parlor avstarjset,, ? 9 T. B. Arrowsmith, Agentv ? J . KINGSTREE S. C. ? i BUZZARD HARDWARE CO. IS THE HOUSE. ~ &:>. 0 mm . .isi .... ,.Q.. |I/E are headquarters for all wjaw . 47-j lk*L WW kinds of Hardware, Guns, .rt-^?I? JriJ- Cutlery, Pumps, Piping-, Steam V^-- ^ l*j ^ If E^ting8, Belting, Pittsburg PerZZ HI Hi HI ? j . h"T ?jr feet Fence, Baib Wire, Crockt| ~== = = =: j { | ery and Glassware, Cooking ja__T ? L_a._i ' - ]-*ML stoves, Builders Material of all kinds, N. C. Pine Shingles, Paroid Koofing, Sash, Doors, Blinds, Lime, Cement, Paint. Farming Implements, Stalk Cutters ~ " ~ ' " ' T>, ^ ry .... Cole Uorn ana motion f laniers, uuttuu i/isuiumuis SEE US BEFORE PLACING YOUR ORDERS. Yours very truly, 1 BLIZZARD HARDWARE CO. LAKE CITY, S C. [ "A dollar saved is a dollar made" & There is no better way to save your dollars than by dealing with - - J. L. Stuckey, the old reliable live-stock man. I have a splendid line of . Bits, Win ml Bbss, 1 that in view of the hard times am offering at 10 per cent ' above cost. A nice bunch of HORSES and MULES always on hand at prices to suit. I J. L. StUCkey, Lake City, S C. 4 CONQUEST By BOOTH 1 | Author of "Cherry,** "M COPYRIGHT. 1905. BY ?J (Continued from last week.) < rnAPTPn m THE door which Ariel had entered opened upon a narrow ball, and down this she ran to her own room, passing, with face averted, the entrance to the broad, low ceillnged chamber that bad served Roger Tabor as a studio for almost fifty years. He was sitting there now. In a hopeless and disconsolate attitude, with his back toward the double doors, which were open, and had been open since their binges had begun to give way, when Ariel was a child. Hearing her step, he called her name, but did not turn, and, receiving no answer, sighed faintly as be beard her own door close upon her. Then as his eyes wandered about the many canvases which leaned against the dingy walls be sighed again. Usually they showed their brown backs, but today he had turned them all to face outward. Twilight, sunset moonlight (the courthouse In moonlight), dawn, morning, noon (Main street at noon), high summer, first spring, red autumn, midwinter, all were there, 11llmitably detailed, worked to a smoothness like a glaze and all lovingly done with unthinkable labor. After a time the old man got up, went to his easel near a window and, sighing again, began patiently to work upon one of these failures?a portrait In oil of a savage old lady, which he was doing from a photograph. The expression of the mouth and the shape of the nose Jiad not pleased her descendants afll the beneficiaries under ; iub win, aua u was upon me images of these features that Roger labored. He leaned far forward, with his face close to the canvas, holding tis brushes after the Spencerian fashion, working steadily through the afternoon and I when the light grew dimmer, leaning cioser to his canvas to see. When It had become almost dark in the room he lit a student lamp with a green glass shade and, placing it upon a table beside him. continued to paint Ariel's voice Interrupted him at last. "It's quitting time, grandfather," she 9alled gently from the1 doorway behind | him. ' , He sank back In his chair, conscious j for the first time of how tired he had grown.' "I suppose so." he said, "though It seemed to me I was just getting my j hand In." His eyes brightened for a moment. "I declare, I believe I've 1 caught it a great deal better. Come j and look, Ariel. Doesn't it seem to ; you that I'm getting it? Those pearly \ shadows in tlje ?esh"? ' "I'm sure of It Those people ought j to be very proud to have it." She came j to him quietly, took the palette and , brushes from his hands and began to j dean them, standing In the shadow be- i hind him. "It's too good for them." "No," he murmured in return. "You j can do much better yourself. Your j Batches sj^ow Jt." "No. no!" she protested quickly. "Yes, they do. and I wondered If It was only because you were young. But ! those I did when I was young are al- j most the same as the ones I paint now. ; I haven't learned much. There hasn't , been any one to show me. And you can't learn from print, never! Yet I've grown in what I see?grown so ; that the world Is full of beauty to me j that I never dreamed of seeing when I i began. But I can't paint it I can't ! get It on the canvas. AJh, I think I | might have known how to if I hadn't had to teach myself, if I could only have seen how some of the other felloivs dirt their work. If I'd ever saved money to get away from Canaan?If I j could have gone away from it and ; come back knowing how to paint it?if : I could have got to Paris for Just one month! Paris for Just one month!" "Perhaps we will You can't tell what may happen." It was always her reply to this cry of his. "You're young, you're young." Hb smiled indulgently. "What were you doing all this afternoon, child?" "In my room, trying to make over mamma's wedding dress for tonight" j "Tonight?" "Mamie Pike invited me to a dance : at their house." "Very well. I'm glad you're going to be gay," he said, not seeing the faintly bitter smile that came to her face. "I don't think I'll be very gay," she nm.Tr/.i.n,l "T dnn't knnw whv I CO. auo n vivu. a \*v? ? ?? ? w , Nobody ever asks me to dance." "Why not?" he asked, with an old i man's astonishment. "I don't know. Perhaps it's because j I don't dress very well." Then, as he ' made a sorrowful gesture, she cut him , off before he could speak. "Oh, it isn't altogether because we're poor. It's more I don't know how to wear what I've got, the way some girls do. I never cared much and?well, I'm not worrying, Roger. And I think I've done a good deal with mamma's dress. It's a very grand dress. I wonder I never thought of wearing it until today. I may be"?she laughed and blushed?"I may be the belle of the ball?who knows!" "You'll want me to walk over with you and come for you afterward, I expect" "Only to take me. It may be late ~ I V CANAAN ARKINGTON, lonsieur Beaucaire." Etc. HARPER I* BROTHERS C wtluTT '1 Tulle a ?u a gum_T mu^y should ask me to dance for 0nce. 01 course \ ''ould come home alone. But Joe Louden Is going to sort of hang around outside, and he'll meet me at the gate and see me safe home.". "Oh!" be exclaimed blankly. "Isn't it all right?" ' "I think I'd better come for you " he | answered gently. "The truth is, I?I I think you'd better not be with Joe Louden a great deal." "Why?" "Well, he doesn't seem a vicious boy to me, dui 1 m airaia ne s getting rather a bad name, my dear." "He's not getting one," she said gravely. "He's already got one. He's "Zf / could have dot to Paris for Just one month I" bad a bad name In Canaan for a long while. It grew in the first place oat of shabbiness and mischief, but it did grow, and if people keep on giving him a bad name the time will come when he'll live up to it He's not any worse than I am, and I guess my own name isn't too good?for a girl. And yet bo fart there's nothing against him except his bad name." "I'm afraid there Is." said Roger. "It doesn't look very well for a young man of his age to be doing no better than delivering papers." "It gives him time to study law," she answered quickly. "If he clerked all day in a store he couldn't" ? "I didn't know, he was studying now. I thought I'd heard that be was in a lawyer's office for a few weeks last year and was turned out for setting fire to It'with a pipe"? "It was an accident" she interposed. "But some pretty important papers were burned, and after that none of the other lawyers would have him." "He's not in ah office," she admitted. "I didn't mean that - But he studies a great deal. He goes to the courts all the time they're in session, and he's bought some books of his own." "Well, perhaps," he assented, "but they say he gambles and drinks and that last week Judge Pike threatened to have him arrested vfor throwing dice with some neeroes behind the Judge's stable." . "What of It? I'm about the only nice person In town that will have anything to do with him?and nobody except you thinks I'm very nice!" "Ariel! Ariel!" "I know all about bis gambling with darkies," she continued excitedly, her voice rising, "und I know that he goes to saloons and that he's an Intimate friend of half the riffrflff in town. And I know the reason for It, too, because he's told me. He wants to know them, to understand them, and he says some day they'll make him a power, and then he can help them!" The old man laughed helplessly. "But I can't let him bHng you home, my dear." She came to him slowly and laid her bands upon bis shoulders. Grandfather and granddaughter were nearly of the same height, and she looked squarely Into his eyes. "Then you must say it is because you want to come for me, not because I mustn't come with Joe." "But I think it Is a little becatse you mustn't come with Joe," he answered, "especially from the Pikes'. Don't ypu see that it mightn't be well for Joe himself if the judge should happen to coo him? I understand he warned the boy to keep away from the neighborhood entirely or he would have him locked up for dice throwing. The judge is a. very influential man, you know, and as determined In matters like this as he Is irritable." "Oh, if you put It on that ground," the girl replied, her eyes softening, "I think you'd better come for me your self." "Very well, I put It on that ground," he returned, smiling upon her. "Then I'll send Joe word and get supper," she said, kissing him. It was the supper hour not only for them, but everywhere in Canaan, and the cold air of the streets bore up and down and around corners the smell of things frying. The dining room wlni dows of all th$ bouses threw bright patches on the suow of the side yards. The windows of other rooms, except those of the kitchens, were dark, for the rule of the place was Puritanical in thrift, as in all things, and the good housekeepers disputed every record of the meters with unhappy gas collectors. There was no better housekeeper in town than Mrs. Louden, nor a thriftier, but hers was one of the few houses in i Canaan that evening which showed j bright lights in the front rooms while ! the family were at supper. It was proof of the agitation caused by the arrival of Eugene that she forgot to turn out the gas in her parlor and in the chamber she called a library on her way to the evening meal. ; Joe escaped as soon as he could, : though not before the count of his later sins had been set before Eugene in detail, in mass and in all of their depth, j breadth and thickness. His father spoke ( but once after nodding beavily to confirm all points of Mrs. Louden's re cital. "You better use any Influence you've got with your brother," be said to Eugene, "to make him come to time. I can't do anything with him. If he gets In trouble, he needn't come to me! I'll never help him again. I'm tired of It!" Joe'e movements throughout the earlier part of ?bat evening are of uncertain report It is known that he made a partial payment of 45 cents at a secondhand book store for a number of volumes, "Grindstaff on Torts" and some others, which he bad negotiated on the Installment system. It is also believed that he won 28 cents playing seven-up in the little room behind Louie Firbach's bar, but these thlugs are of little Import compared to the established fact that at 11 o'clock he ?i* nno nf the hull emMtl at the Pike mansion. He took no active part in the festivities, nor was he one of the dancers. His was, on the contrary/the role of a quiet observer. He lay stretched at full length upon the floor of the Inclosed porch?one of the strips of canvas was later found to have been loosened?wedged between the outer railing and a row of palms In green tubs. It tras not to play eavesdropper that the uninvited Joe bad come. He was not there to listen, and It Is possible that had the curtains of other windows afforded blm the chance to behold the dance be might not have risked the dangers of his present position. He bad not the slightest Interest In the whispered coquetries that he heard. He watched only to catch now and then over the shoulders of the dancers a fitful glimpse of a pretty head that flitted across the window?the amber hair of Mamie Pike. He shivered In the drafts, and the floor of the porch was cement, painful to elbow and knee, the space where he lay cramped and narrow, but the golden bubbles of her hair, the shimmer of her dainty pink dress and the fluffy wave of her lace scarf as she crossed and recrossed in a waltz left him apparently In no ' discontent He watched with parted Hps, his pale cheeks reddening when- ' ever those fair glimpses were his. At I last she came out to the veranda with i riurpnA nnd sat unon a little divan, so ! close to Joe that, daring wildly In the ! shadow, be reached oat a trembling band and let bis fingers rest upon the end of her scarf, which had fallen from her shoulders and touched the floor. She sat with her back to him, as did Eugene. "You have changed, I think, since last summer," be beard her say reflectively. * "For the worse, ma cherie?" Joe's expression might have been worth seeing when Eugene said "ma cherie," for it was known in the Louden household that Mr. Bantry bad failed to pass his examination in the French language. "No," she answered. "But you have seen so much and accomplished so much since then. You have become so polished and so"? She paused and then continued: "But perhaps I'd better not say it You might be offended." "No. I want you to say It" be returned confidently, and his confidence was fully Justified, for she said: "Well, then, I mean that you have become so thoroughly a man of the world. Now I've said it! You are offended, aren't you?" "Not at all; not at all," replied Mr. Bantry, preventing by a masterful effort his pleasure from showing In his face. "Then I'm?glad," she whispered, and Joe saw his stepbrother touch her hand, but she rose quickly. 'There's the music," she cried happily. "It's a j waltz, and it's yours." Joe heard her little high heels tapping gayly toward the window, followed by the heavier tread of Eugene, but he did not watch them go. He lay on his back, with the hand that had touched Mamie's scarf pressed across his closed eyes. The music of the waltz was of the old fashioned swingingly sorrowful enf+ anrl It Trnnl<t h*? hflr/t to KJ1V hOW long'It was after that before he could hear the air played without a recurrence of the bitterness of that moment. The rhythmical pathos of the violins was in such accord with a faint sound of weeping which he heard near him presently that for a little while he believed this sound to be part of the music and part of himself. Then it became more distinct, and he raised himself on one elbow to look about Very close to him, sitting upon the divan In the shadow, was a girl wearing a dress of beautiful silk. She was crying softly, her face in her hands. CHAPTER IV. * RIEL had worked all the after/\ noon over her mother's wed/ \ ding gown, and two hours A ^ were required by her toilet for the dance. She curled her hair frizzily, burning it here and there, with a slate * 2V< _____ pencil boated over a lamp Cbinu?eyrA?I,. (J ( she placed above one ear tbree or four large artificial rosea, taken from an old i hat of her mother's, which she had found in a trunk in the storeroom. Possessing no slippers, she carefully blacked and polished her shoes, which had been clumsily resoled, and fastened into the strings of each small rosettes of red ribbon, after which she practiced swinging the train of her skirt until she was proud of her manipulation of it She bad no powdyr, but found in her grandfathers room a,J lump of magnesia that he was in the habit of taking for heartburn and passed it over and over her brown face and hands. Then a lingering gaze into her small mirror gave her joy at last. She yearned so hard to see herself charming that she did see herself so. Admiration came, and she told herself that she was more attractive to look at than she had ever been in her life and that perhaps at last she might begin to t be sought for like other girls. It was in the Pike dressing room that the change began to come. There was a big cheval glass at one end of the room, and she faced it when her turn came?for the mirror was popular? with a sinking spirit. There was the contrast, like a picture painted and framed- The other girls all wore their hair after the fashion introduced rrto Canaan by Mamie Pike the week before on her return from a visit to Chicago. None of them had "crimped" and none had bedecked their tresses with artificial flowers. Her alterations of the wedding dress had not been successful; the skirt was too short In front and higher on one side than on the other, showing too plainly the heavy soled shoes, which had lost their polish In the walk through the snow. The ribbon rosettes were fully revealed, and as she glanced at their reflection she beard the words, "Lool^ at that train and those rosettes!" whispered behind her and saw In the mirror two pretty young women turn away with their handkerchiefs over their mouths and retreat hurriedly to an alcove. All the feet In the room except Ariel's were in dainty kid or satin slippers of the color of the dresses from which they glimmered out, and only Ariel wore a train, She went away from the mirror and pretended to be busy with a hanging thread In her sleeve. Ariel sat in one of the chairs against the wall and watched the dancers with a smile of eager and benevolent Interest In Canaan no parents, no guardians, no aunts were haled forth o' nights to duenna the Junketings of youth.. Ariel sat conspicuously alone. There was nothing else for her to do. It was not an easy matter. Once or twice between the dances she saw Miss Pike speak. appeallngly to one of the superfluous, glancing at the same time in her own direction, and Ariel could see, too, that the appeal proved unsuccessful, until at last Mamie approached her leading Norbert Flitcroft partly by the hand, partly by will power. Norbert was an excessively fat boy and at the present moment looked as patient as the blind. But he asked Ariel If she was "engaged for the next dance" and, Mamie having flitted away, stood disconsolately be side her waiting for tbe music to begin. Ariel was grateful for him. Tbe orchestra flourished into "La Paloma;" he put his arm mournfully about her and, taking ber right hand ^ with his left, carried her arm out to a rigid right angle, beginning to pump and balance for time. They madethree false starts and then got away. Ariel danced badly; she bopped and lost the step, but they persevered, bumping against other couples continually. She caught ber partner making a burlesque face of suffering over her shoulder and, turning her head quickly, saw for whose benefit he had constructed It Eugene Bantry, flying expertly by with Mamie, was bestowing upon Mr. Flitcroft a condescendingly V commiserative wink. The next instant she tripped In her train and fell to the floor at Eugene's feet carrying her partner with her. There was a shout of laughter. The young hostess stopped Eugene, who would have gone on, and he had no choice but to stoop to Ariel's assistance. "It seems to be a habit of mine," she said, laughing loudly. She did not appear to see the hand he offered, but got to her feet withmit V>^ln onH walked nnlcklv awav with Norbert, who proceeded to live up to the character be had given himself. "Perhaps we had better not try It again," she laughed. "Well, I should think not," he returned, with the frankest gloom. With the air of conducting her home he took her to the chair against the wall whence he had brought her. There hi 3 responsibility for her seemed to cease. "Will you excuse me?" he asked, and there was no doubt that \ he felt that he had been given more than bis share that evening, even though he was fat. Ariel sat through more dances, Interminable dances and intermissions, In that same chair, in which, It began to seem, she was to live out the rest of her life. Now and then If she thought people were looking at her as they passed she broke into a laugh and nodded slightly, as if still amused over her mishap. After a lone time she rose and, laugh lug cheerfully to Mr. Flitcroft, who was standing In the doorway and repied with a wan smile, stepped out quickly Into the hall, where she almost n.n Into her greatuncle, Jonas fTabor^ He was going toward the big' front V doors with Jndge Pike, having just come ont of the tetter's library, down the hall. Jonas was breathing heavily and was shockingly pale, though his eyes were vtry bright. He turned his back upon , bis grandniece sharply and went out i of the door. Ariel turned from him f Continued on page 7.) . [ \ L