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fm_ ????? ????? 1 SPRING IS HERE! ? ? ^ *< and you want to freshen up your j* ^ home in keeping with the season. ^ J| See my new lines of ^ ? ed Room Suits, Felt Mattresses, Hammocks, ? ? Rugs and Mattings and Refrigerators. | J* I keep constantly on hand a com. gj 4? pfete line of : : : : ** 1 COFFINS and CASKETS \ 4* and am prepared to render my * ^ services day and night. ** l L. J. STACKLEYI THE FTRSinTRE MA.V J ? K1NGSTREE, - - S. C. ? 8 Water f *csldences 2 g AND (| s<orc 5 All 1 J Hotels (1 X Light Public buildings X Tlfoderate Cost 8 U ^ C//COC j) fj Gasoline Engines for any purpose. 5 2 <? c5l Sngman, O.C. | His Parlor Market | t? . ^ ^??? ??? ???i ^ $ Dressed Meats. Fish, Game, Poultry f* J Oysters, Eggs and Full Line ? $ X^0^2TLC37- Q-roceries ? 1 hides wanted highestmarket? ?j prices paid. .1 f!k j? ? tlxe parlor 2v?arfeet?, ? ? T. E. Arrowsmith, Agent., j* $ kingstree s. c. * B^f \ > BUZZARD HARDWARE COT IS THE HOUSE. K '' fj 11/E are headquarters for all , '~-| If kinds of Hardware, Guns, W S^t-H?I?ri?fu? Cutlery, Pumps, Piping", Steam ?*-j j 1 I .BjF Fittings, Belting", Pittsburg Per^ ~~~ j - | fff - feet Fence, Baib Wire, Crock~EE" ery and Glassware, Cooking J. ,i _i l._l._:?Stoves, Builders Material of all kinds, N. C. Pine Shingles, Paroid Koofing, Sash, Doors, Blinds, Lime, Cement, Paint. Farming Implements, Stalk Cutters Cole Corn and Cotton Planters, Guano Distributors. : : : : SEE US BEFORE PLACING YOUR ORDERS. Yours very truly, BLIZZARD HARDWARE CO. i avt rrrv q r VA A A I V/ Vt ? ?? F . St * "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 "* n _ _.. ITT ?J TT I lis, wins in miss, (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. J. L. Stuckey, uke city, s. c. Rates to James The following rates to the Jar next Friday, April 26, have beei Season Ticket 60 Scranton $15 65 $1 Lake City 16 00 1 Cades 10 35 1 Kingstree 16 75 ] Salters 16 95 1 Lanes 17 20 1 Gourdins 17 35 ] Coach excursion tickets will b opening of the exposition and wi week thereafter. Thev are lir tickets will be sold on the day p sition and will be on sale daily c tion. & CONQUEST By BOOTH 1 Author of "Cherry.*' "P COPYRIGHT. 1905. BY 4 V (Continued from last week.) "What!" he gasped. "You don't need to dust it!" she went on tremulously. And even then he did not know who she was. CHAPTER XI. THERE was a silence, for if the dazzled young man could have spoken at all he could have found nothing to say; and, perhaps, the lady would not trust her own voice just then. His eyes had fallen again. He was too dazed and, In truth, too panic stricken now to look at her, though If he had been quite sure that she was part of a wonderful dream he might have dared. She was seated be? side him, and had handed him her parasol In a little way which seemed to Imply that of course he had reached for It, so that It was to be seeu how used she was to have all tiny things done for her, though this was not then of his tremulous observing. He did perceive, however, that he was to furl the dainty thing. He pressed the catch and let down the top t^nidly, as if fearing to break or tear it, and as it closed, held near bis face, he caught a very faint, sweet, spicy emanation from it like wild roses and cinuamon. He did not know her, but his timidity and a strange little choke in his throat, the sudden fright which had seized him, were not caused by embarrassment. He had no thought that she was one he had known, but could not for the moment recall. There was nothing of the awkwardness of that. No; he was overpowered by the miracle of this meeting. And yet, white with marveling, he felt it to be so much more touchingly a greater happiness than he had ever known that at J* ? ? ?* tn/\mi?AocSVt1r atari L'im ii naa ouu. At last te beard her voice again, shaking a little, as she said: "I am glad you remembered." "Remembered what?" be faltered. "Then you don't?" she cried. "And yet you came." "Came hare, do you mean?" "Yes?now, at noon." "Ah!" be half whispered, unable to speak aloud. "Was it you who said?who said: 'Remember! Across? across' " 'Across Main street bridge at noon!'" she finished for him gently. "Yes." He took a deep breath in the wonder of it. "Where was it you said that?" he asked slowly. "Was it last night?" "Don't you even know that you camt to meet me?" "I?came to?to meet?youV She gave a little pitying cry, very -<ear a sob, seeing his utter bewilder cent "It was like the strangest dream ha fce world," she said. "You were at &e station when I came last night Tou don't remember at all?" His eyes downcast, his face burning aotly, be could only shake his bead. "Yes," she contiwApl. "I thought no me would pe th?e, for I bad not written to say what train I should take, but when I stepped down from the platform you were standing there, though you didn't see me at first?not until I bad called your name and ran to you. Y'ou said, 'I've come to meet you,' but you said it queerly, I thought. And then you called a carriage for me. But you seemed so strange. You couldn't tell bow you knew tfcet I was coming, and?and then I?I understood you weren't yourself. You were very quiet, but 1 knew?I knew! So I made you get into the carriage?and?and"? She faltered to a stop, and with that shame itself brought him courage. II? turned and faced her. She had lifted her handkerchief to her eyes, but at his movement she dropped it, and it was not so much the delicate loveliness of her face that he saw then as the tears upon her cheeks. "Ah, poor boy!" she cried. "I knew! I knew!" "You?you took me home?" "You told me where you lived," she answered. "Yes, I took you home." "I don't understand," he stammered huskily. "I don't understand." She leaned toward him slightly, looking at htm with great lntentness. "You didn't know me last night" ? I town Exposition, nestown exposition, which opens 1 furnished us by the agent here: 7 Days Days 10 Days Coach Ex.-unCu 3 25 $12 00 $7 50 3 40 12 10 7 70 3 65 12 30 8 10 [4 00 12 55 8 55 14 15 12 70 8 80 14 '40 12 85 8 90 14 50 12 95 8 95 e sold on the day prior to the 11 te on sale Tuesdays of each nited to seven days. The other rioi to the opening of the expolunn<,r the period of the exposiC ? ??????????? 0/ CANAAN rARKINGTON, 'lonsicur Beaueaire," Etc. HARPER BROTHERS -? ! sue sain. "Do you kuo-.v me nowr Tor answer l*e could only stare at ; her, dumfounflfcl. He lifted an unsteady hand toward her appeallngly. | but the manner of the lady as she saw the truth underwent an April change b " H "I'ou told mc tohorc i/ou lived," she answered. She drew back lightly. He was fa vored with the most delicious low laugh he had ever heard, and by some magic whisk which she accomplished there wag no sign of tears about her. "Ah, I'm glad you're the same, JoeT she said. "You never would or could pretend very well. I'm glad you're the same, and I'm glad I've changed, though that isn't why you have forgotten me. You've forgotten me because you never thought of me. Perhaps I should not have known you If you had changed a great deal, as I I have." He started, leaning back from her. "Ah." she laughed, "that's ij! That funny little twist of the head you always had, like a?like a?well, you know I must have told you a thousand times that it was like a nice friendly puppy. So why shouldn't I say so now? And your eyebrows! When you look like that nobody could ever forget you, Joe." \ He rose from the log, and the mongrel leaped upon him uproariously, thinking they were to go home, belike to food. The lady laughed again. "Don't let him spoil my parasol. And I inj3t warn you now: Never, never tread on my skirt! I'm very irritable about such things!" He had taken three or four uncertain backward steps from her. She sat before him, radiant with laughter, the loveliest creature be had ever seen, but between him and this charming vision there swept, through the warm, scented June air, a veil of snow like a driven fog, and half obscured In the heart of it a young girl stood knee deep in a drift piled against an old plcke: gate, her black waterproof and shabby skirt flapping in the blizzard like torn Balls, one of her hands outstretched toward him, her startled eyes fixed on his. "And, oh, how like you," said the lady; "how like you and nobody else in the world, Joe, to have a yellow dog!" "Ariel Tabor!" His lips formed the words without bOUUU. "Isn't It about time?" she said. "Are 6trange ladies in the habit of descending from trains to take you home?" Once, upon a white morning long ago, the sensational progress of a certain youth up Main street had stirred Canaan. But that day was as nothing to this. Mr. Bantry had left temporary paralysis in his wake, but in the case of the two young people who passed slowly along the street today It was petrifaction, which seemingly threatened in several instances (most notably that of Mr. Arp> to become permanent. The lower porfou of the street, lined with three and Joi.r storr bnildings_of j Br~k auu stone, rather grim auu uot | facades under the midday sun, affordj ed little shade to the church comers, ! who were working homeward in proI cessioual little groups and clumps, | none walking fast, though none with I the appearance of great leisure, since neither rate of progress wofcld have been esteemed befitting the day. The ! growth of Canaan, steady, though nev' ?r startling, had left almost all of the churches downtown, and Main street the principal avenue of communication between them and the "residence section." So today the intermittent prot cession stretched along the new cement ! jidewalks from a little below the ' square to upper Main street, where | maples liued the thoroughfare and the j mansions of the affluent stood among i pleasant lawns and shrubberies. It was late, for this had been a communion Sunday, and those far in adi vanee, who had alheady reached the 1 nrettv and shadv nart of the street. were- members of the churches where services had been shortest, though few iu the long parade looked as if they had been attending anything very short, and many heads of families were crisp in their replies to the theological inquiries of their offspring. The men imparted largely a gloom to the itinerant concourse, most of them wearing hot. long black coats and having wilted their collars, the ladies relieving this gloom somewhat by the lighter tints of their garments, the spick and span little girls relieving it greatly by their white dresses and their faces, the latter bright with the hope of Sunday ice cream, while the boys, experiencing some solace in that they were finally our where a person could at least scratch himself if he had to, yet opposed by the decorous necessities of tin* day, marched along, furtively planning behind imperturbably secretive countenances various means for the later dispersal of an odious monotony. Usually the conversation of this long 6tring of the homeward bound was not too frivolous or worldly. Nay; it properly inclined to discussion of the sermon. It was a serious and seemly Sunday parade, the propriety of whose behavior was today almost disintegrated when the lady of the bridge walked up the street in the shadow of a lacy lav"ender parasol carried by Jose^ Louden. The congregation of the church across the square?that to which Joe's stepaunt had been late?was Just debouching. almost in mass, upon Main street when these two went by. It is not quite the truth to say that all except the children came to a dead halt, but it is not very far from it. The air was thick with subdued exclamations and whisperings. Here is no mystery. Joe was probably the only person of respectable derivation in Canaan who bad not known for weeks that Ariel Tabor was on her way home. And the news that she had arrived the night before had been widely disseminated on the way to church, eutering church, in church (even so!) and coming out of church. An account of her house in the Avenue Henri Martin and of her portrait in the Salon?a mysterious business to many and not lacking in grandeur for that?had occupied two columns in] the Tocsin on a day some months before when Joe had found himself inlmically headlined on the first page and had dropped the paper without reading further. Ariel's name had been in the mouth of Canaan for a long time?unfortunately for Joe, however, not in the mouth of that Canaan which held converse with him. Joe had not known her. The women recognized her infallibly at first glance, even mose ?uu uau ijuuc wigotten ber. And the women told their men; hence the un-Sunday-like demeanor of the procession, for few towns hold it more unseemly to stand and stare at passersby, especially on the Sabbath. But Ariel Tabor returned?and walking with?with Joe Louden! Ariel flushed a little when she perceived the extent of their conspicuousness, but it was not the blush that Joe remembered had reddened the tanned skin of old, for her bi-ownness had gone long ago. though it had not left ber merely pink and white. This was a delicate rosiness rising from her cheeks to her temples, as the earliest dawn rises. If there had been many words left In Joe he would have called !t a divine blush. It fascinated him, and if anything could have deepened the glamour about her it would have been this blush. He did not understand It but when he saw it he stumbled. Those who gaped and stared were for him only blurs in the background. Truly, he saw "men as trees walking," and when it became necessary to step out to the curb in passing some clump of people it was to him as if Ariel and be, enchantedly alone, were working their way through underbmsh In the woods. He kept trying to realize that this lady of wonder was Ariel Tabor, but he could not. He could not connect the shabby Ariel, whom he lmd treated as one boy treats another, with this young woman of the world. I!e b id nlwaybeen embarrassed himself and nshnm^o of her when anything she did made him remember that, after all. she was u girl, as on the day he ran a way when she kissed a lock of his hair escaping from the bandage. With that recollection even his ears grew red. It did not seem probable that it wonld ever happen again. The next instant be heard himself calling her "Miss Tabor." At this she seemed amused. "You ought to have called me that years ago," she said, "for all you knew me." "I did know her?you, I mean," he answered. "I used to know nearly everything you were going to say before you said It. It seems strange now"? "Yes." she interrupted, "it does seem strange now." ? . - "Somehow," be went on, "I doubt if now I'd know." v "Somehow," she echoed, with flue gravity, "I doubt it too." Although he bad so dim a perception M of the staring and whispering which greeted and followed them, Ariel, of fll course, was thoroughly aware of it, fi though the only sign she gave was the- S slight blush, which very soon disap peared. That people turned to look at ? her may have been not altogether ta novelty. A girl who had learned fonppear unconscious of the continental stare, the following gaze of the boulevards. the frank glasses of the costanza in Rome, was not ill equipped to face Main street, Canaan, even as it was today. Under the sycamores before tbey started they had not talked a great deal. There had beeu long silences, almost all her questions concerning the * * period of his runaway absence. She appeared to know and to understand everything which had happened since bis return to the town. He had not, in bis turn, reached the point where he would begin to question her. He was too'breath less in his consciousness of the marvelous present hour. She had told bim of the death or itoger iaoorr the year before. "Poor man!" she said gently. "He lived to see 'bow tbe other fellows did it' at last, and everybody liked bim. He was very happy over there." After a little while she had said that, it was growing close upon lunch time;, she must be going back. "Then?then?goodby," he replied ruefully. "Why?" "I'm afraid you don't understand. It: wouldn't do for you to be seen with me. Perhaps, though, you do understand. Wasn't that why you asked me to meet you out here beyond the bridge?" In answer she looked at him full and straight for three seconds, then threw back her head and closed her eyes tight with laughter. Without a word she took the parasol from him, opened It herself, placed the smooth white coral handle of it in his hand and lightly took his arm. There was no furttierdemur on the part of the young mAn. He did not know where she was going. He did not ask. Once Ariel smiled politely, not at Mr. ^ Louden, and Inclined her head twice,, with the result that the latter, after thinking for a time of how gracefully she did it and how pretty the top of her bat was, became gradually con- 'M scious of a meaning in her action?that i8 she had bowed to some one across the fl street. He lifted his hat, about four /M minutes late, and discovered Mamie fa Pike and Eugene upon the opposite si pavement walking home from church 8 together. Joe changed color. H The sound of Ariel's voice brought 8 him to himself. "She is lovelier than ever, isn't she?'" "Yes, indeed," he answered blankly. | "Would you still risk"? she began, smiling, but, apparently thinking better of it, changed her question: "What Is the name of your dog, Mr. Louden? You haven't told me." "Oh, he's just a yellow dog." he evaded unskillfully. "Young man!" she said sharply. t T "Well," he admitted reluctantly, "I call him Speck for short." "And what for long? I want to knew his real name." "It's mighty Inappropriate, because we're fond of each other," ??aid Joe, "but when I picked him up he was soyellow and so thin and so creeping and so scared that I christened him 'Respectability.' " They were now opposite the Pike , mansion, and, to his surprise, she turn- . . . ed, indicating the way by a touch upon his sleeve, and crossed the street toward the gate, which Mamie and Eugene had entered. Mamie, after ei- i JZA changing a word with Eugene updtt the steps, was already hurrying lnt& the house. Ariel paused at the gate as If wait Ing for Joe to open It. < "nnn't vnn know?" she cried. "I'm i staying here. Judge Pike has charge of all my property. He was the administrator or something." Then, see-' ing him chopfallen and aghast, she went on: "Of course you don't know. You don't know anything about me. * You haven't even asked." g "You're going to live here?" Jie gasped. "Will you come to see me?" she < laughed. "Will you come this after- j noon?" < He grew white. "You know I can't," be said. "You came here once. You risked a good deal then just to see Mamie < dance by a window. Don't you dare a little for an old friend?" "All right," he gulped. "HI try." Mr. Bantry bad come down to the / gate and was holding It open, bis eyes fixed upon Ariel, within them a rising glow. An Impression came to Joe afterward that his stepbrother had looked vprv handsome. "Possibly you remember me, Miss 1 Tabor?" said Eugene In a deep and ] Impressive voice, lifting bis bat "We were neighbor^, I believe, in tbe old j days." She gave bim her band in a fashion ] somewhat mannerly, favoring him with a bright, negligent smile. "Oh, ! quite," she answered, turning again to ! Joe as she entered the gate. "Then I ; shall expect you?" "I'll try," said Joe. "I'll try." M He stumbled away, Respectability ^ and he together interfering alarmingly I, with the comfort of Mr. Fliteroft, who 1 had stopped In the middle of the pav* ment to stare glassily at Ariel. Eu- * gene accompanied the latter into the \ house, and Joe, looking back, under- j stood. Mamie had sent bis stepbrother I to bring Ariel In?and to keep him ; from following. "This afternoon!" The thought took ! away his breath, and he became paler. ! fContinued on page 7.) / M