Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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1 7 IF NOT, WHY,NOT? 4 Whose fault is it? It is not \ aiiw Wa affor vrtn thp necessary vuics. ?ig viivi j v? requirements to place you on the safe side,and would be more than delighted to WRITE YOU A POLICY that will protect you from all loss by fires at a very low rate. We represent the" best and most reliable companies on earth. Kiogstree Insurance,Real Estate & Loan Co. W. H. WELCH. Manager. , v . UGH i'NINS RODS. A H* WHITLOCK, ^^^1^ LaHe City, S. C., Special Sales Agent ? .. Representing the largest manufacturers of all kinds Improved Copper and Galvanized jajfcVjimX N Section Rods. (Endorsed by the Highest Scientific Auis?jg? '5k thorities and Fire Insurance Companies). Pure Copper Wire Cables, all sizes. Our Full Cost Sfafer" -_-H Guarantee given with each job. Vmi ! 1 sell on close margin of profit, dividing commission with mv customers. S-7-tf WATTS'JEWELRY STORE KINGSTREE. S. C. I keep on hand everyjf thing to be found in an v up-to-date jewelry house Repairingand engraving done with neatness and despatch. :: As a home dealer, guaranteeing quality and prices, I Solicit Your Patronage. Near the Railroad Station. Undressed Lumber. I always have on hand a lot of undressed lumber (board and framing) at my mill near Kingstree. for sale at the lowest price for good material. See or write me for further information, etc. - F. H. HODGE. ' v- ? I am now equipped to do this work satisfactorily and can save you from $1.50 to $3.00 on i each pair of glasses. Let me fit you out with ZDS* New Kryptok Glasses, reading and distance vision ground in each lens. If you break your lenses bring them to me. I will duplicate them on short notice. Save the pieces. T. E. BAGGETT. Jeweler and Optician, Kingstree, South Carolina The Meanest Miller in Town is prepared to grind your - corn into fine meal, coarse or medium grits. Bring along your corn. I am also prepared to grind your wheat into the * j. J _ _ J? A very Dest graue ui uuur? -q the home ground kind. w Bring us your wheat as soon as it is ready. EPPS MILLING CO., S. F. F?PS, Proprietor CYPRESS ^ SASH V DOORS ^ BLINDS A 4. ** % q? MOULDINGS AND MILLWORK I r Sttoumer, WHS riililUI!:?; mi- UMI.I ? .. ' when she heard the rattld of horse hoofs aud heard the voice of Judge Stanley call upon her to halt She 1 > . '^V^g^^3lit::'":::!5^:-':^ *'^ lmQrfplaMnK|HBBH^^AVy. K-HR ?n nn^^HHnnB^>^lrfln| Wasting His Substance In Riotous Living. I turned to see the judge on horseback down below, his army pistol leveled at her. Hagar held up the child, not so much to 6hield herself as that its pretty innocence might soften the hard heart of the relentless pursuer. But, whether j by accident or desigm will never be known, the heavy explosion of the pis- i tol echoed among the rocks. The bul- j let whistled past the flinching Hagar nnd the terrified child. The horse rear ed at the crack of tin? pistol, throwing his rider, breaking the neck of the! vengeful judge and dashing his brains against a Jagged rock. Raising the child to her shoulder and supporting her there with her strong J right hand. Ilagar looked down ui>on her dead persecutor and called upon him, with a gyiHjy's curse, the death of the vultures she had predicted for him when first they met. Then she climbed over the summit of the ridge with her precious burden and was gone. **??***! Eighteen years have passed since Judge Stanley's shattered body was found in the mountains, the seal of death upon his lips. Behold Arthur Stanley 2d, master of; Stanley hall and wasting his substance in riotous liviug. Behold Dr. Henry Lee, pressed with the weight of years, guardian of the heir of Stanley aud wondering what will the harvest be? The old colored nurse is dead, as is also the old colored factotum, Ned. There is none alive that knows what really happened on that tragic night and In the tragic time tnat ronowea : save the venerable old doctor and the i gypsy woman whom he has sought for secretly, but in vain, through all these! years. While Arthur Stanley 2d carouses; with his cousin and other wild compan- j ions at Stanley hall and while old Dr. Lee muses in his study and wonders what will the harvest be, the harvest is close at hand. Fate, weaver of destinies, in the shape of Ilagar comes i upon the scene. If the doctor has wondered if. in his : hate of one dead man and his love for j another he has not done wrong Ilagar, ! queeu of the gypsies, wonders, too, If ! her vengeance has not pone all awry. ; Esther Stanley, or, as she Is ltnown, Esther Harding, is a beautiful and sweetly dlspoeitk>ned young woman , now. The wild mother love Hagar ! bore for the son that was sold from her has passed to sweet Esther. So it is that Hagar returns to Virginia, re solved again to sacrifice ber very heart. , A wild gvpsy camp is no aMdlng place I for ? fair yotmg girl or gentie dkwq. Hngar knows all the documents she j took from Stanley boll wheD she ab- j ducted Esther. knows tbmn by heart, i as she knows orery facet on the Ala- ; ! moral from the sky, which she wrung J that night from the dead hand of Colo- j nel Stanley. She would see her boy j again In his manhood. The wild hope possesses her that he may fall In love ? with Esther and that tbt> wrt>* *h?.t Copyright. 1913. by A novelization of the photo play s mitted to the scenario department of contest during December and January. ' came from many sections in the United as well as thousands of amateurs took (Concluded from last"week.) j frightened little girl so Its cries were silenced, and drove away. The next morning the news of his 1 enemy's death reached Judge Stanley. ! ! With it were vague rumors and wliis j I pered suspicions. Other news came. ' ; too?news of the escajH.' of tlie gypsy : i mad woman and the disappearance of | Dr. Lee's horse and buggy. The jud. e j ; stayed not io rejoice at the death of j his enemy, lie refused even to tell Ids I wife wh it strange business called liirr? I hence, with a pistol in the hoist- r :u j his saddle side. a In a narrow detile in the Blue I i i *e Jud ye Stanley tracked down his pr y Uagar had abandoned the doctor's ex hausted horse and the 1: ?w broken yij. and, bearing the child on her strong * 1 - I? ..l.'.wa t ll A ??A/| 1 V " I dx ROir If. MS CARDELL *Roy L. McCardell elected as the best in over 19,000 subthe Chicago Tribune in a $10,000 prize The manuscripts in this competition I States and Canada. Authors of note part. oiiiy two living people know shall rest llffhtly with the dead when Esther is mistress by marriage, If not by right, of Stanley ball. Iler message for Dr. Dee is a written one. It reads: I have com? back after elehteen years. I have had my revenge, but I love the girl. What shall be done with her? HAGAR HARDING. Esther only learns from the kindly lips of the doctor and the tremulous ones of Uer supposed mother that a new life nns opened for her; that she must take her place in the society of the countryside as the adopted daughter of Dr. Lee, as long arranged. This is nil she knows; tills Is all she is told, as with her belongings she bids a weeping adieu to the stern but kindly gypsy woman she has known as mother all her conscious years. And she rides away as the doctor's daughter from tho gypsy camp. With Esther the doctor takes the diamond from the sky, demanded of Ilagnr as part of Esther's Inheritance. Hardly has the doctor's carriage departed than Luke Lovell. Ilagar's head man, is given command to strike camp. In an Instant all is bustle and confusion. Within an hour Hagar and her tribe are on their way. In three months, though the proud women of the neighl>orhood look askance, Esther is the belle of the countryside. The vine clad porch of the doctor's old house sees nightly gathered there the voung SDarks of Fairfax. Then comes a night In June, and in the moonlight are four young men, all paying court to the happy Esther. Chief among them are the Stanley eouslns, Arthur and Blair. Some slight attention to his cousin, Blair, rouses Arthur to a temper of Jealousy. Prettily rebuked by Esther, Arthur leaves In a huff. Then Esther vents her coquettish displeasure upon the till then triumphant Blair, and he, now angry also, arises and departs, leaving the field to two swains. In his study that overlooks the gardens at the side the old doctor Is gazing wonderingly In the light of the study lamp at the great diamond. Sulkily straying by the house, in hit jealousy and anger, Blair Stanley sees the light gleaming from the study. Curious and not overnice in his curiosity, he peers through the window. He starts back, clinching his hands. He remembers now the oft whispered suspicions of his mother: "Dr. Lee wai alone with Colonel Stanley when he died. Who else .but he has taken and hidden away the Stanley heirloom?" The obsession of the desire for thia priceless Stanley heirloom has been born and bred in Blair Stanley. He hies away, but that night, when the swains have long departed and the good doctor and the fair Esther have long retired to slumber, Blair Stanley returns prepared to break in and bear away the diamond from the sky. In the library at Stanley nail me young heir of Stanley muses and dreams in softened moml of Esther. His guitar lies near him, and he picks it up and gently strums it. In his mind's eye he sees himself serenading sweet Esther Lee, as she is now called, and begging her gentle pardon in the moonlight should she come to her window to listen. The romantic idea suits his mood. He takes the guitar and hastens again to the doctor's house. Blair Stanley has clambered through the study window, closed it and drawn the shade. He has softly lit the doctor's study lamp and rifled the drawer of the old secretary and the cash box It holds. He has seized the diamond from the sky and clasped it in agitated ecstacy upon his bosom. Then upon 8om? Oteght Attention Roweee Artkwr'e Jealousy. his gntttT ears falls the strain ef a guitar. He hides tbe diamond and the chain ami locket that bold* it beneath his collar and under his shirt. Meanwhile, sleeping the light slumber of the aged, the old doctor has been aroused by the opening of tbe window, dandle In hnnd. he descends to his < I study and caters just as rne last gien* i from the diamond in the lamplight is ; shrouded by the shirt of the thief in ! the night- There is a quick, sharp j struggle. Frenzied with fear and i covetonsness and resolved to do murj dcr rather than lose the long coveted heirloom, P.lair Stanley, maddened with fear and rape, strangles the old doctor till the weak old man falls hack m ms cnnir, ins nearr stopped in ueatn. Then the murderer hacks from the I window, where the strains from the guitar. strains of a love song, tinkle in the night SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS. A hitter feud lus existed between Colonel Arthur Stanley and his cousin, Judge Lamar Stanley. The feud has been en1 gendered in family jealousy over an heirloom, the diamond from the sky, that ; was found in a fallen metoor by an adI venturer ancestor. Also, the succession 1 to the Stanley earldom in England may come to an American Stanley. When j a daughter ie horn to Colonel Stanley of the eldest branch of the Stanleys In I America and the mother of the child dies at its birth, the chagrined colonel I buys a newborn gypsy boy and substitutes him as heir. Three years later the gypsy mother, having had no part in this bargain, steals the colonel's little daughter. being reared In secret, and leave* her own son undetected as the heir The gypsy mother lias also obtained possession of the diamond from the sky, and a document holds the Stanley secret of the fa'se heir. She rears the little girl. Enthor I Stanley, as her own and grows to love her. When Esther is grown a beautiful young girl, Hagar. .now gypsy queen, returns to Virginia with her. She hes a * wild plan that Dr. Lee the late Colonel : Stanley's old friend, may now adopt Esther, as originally intended. Her hope also ; is that her son, the supposed Arthur Stan ley 2d, may fall hi love with Esther 1 and thus tho innocent girl may become i by marriage what she is by birth?mistress of Stanley hall. Dr. Lee adopts Esther, but also demands that Hagar turn over to his custody the diamond from the sky. Dr. Lee also informs Hagar | that her son, the supposed Arthur Stanley 2d, is a profligate and not worthy of ' Esther, but Hagar hopes for the best and I with her people departs. Arthur Stanley i docs fall in love with Esther and so does ! his boon companion. Blair Stanley, the cousin who would be the rightful male heir of Stanley were the Stanley secret known. In stealing the diamond Blair causes the death of the doctor. Outside is Arthur, serenading Esther. i CHAPTER V. The Silent Witnese. CAUGIIT like a rat in a trap, with Arthur Stanley outside the window serenading the dead as well as the living, and Esther stirring o'erhend, Blair Stanley nerves himself with n supreme effort and turns the knob of the study door and ! steals down the darkened hallway. Fie | unbolts the front door, and, closing It i softly behind him, as though lie would shut out the fuee of the dead man, Blair slips across the broad piazza like a phantom of the Dight But Arthur has heard the grating of the bolt, the soft opening of the door, "What are you doing here?" and has stepped from the side to the front of the house, hoping it is Esther who comes in answer to his serenade and to receive his contrite pfeadings for forgiveness. He reaches out to embrace the gentle girl, only to find he has clasped the stalwart struggling frame of a man. The moon breaks through a cloud as his prisoner struggles, and its rays illuminate the face nf Rl?ir Stnnlpv. "What are you doing here, coming out of Dr. Lee's house at this hour?" whispers Arthur, tensely. "Keep quiet, you fool!" Blair Stanley hisses, like a snake. "A girl's good name Is at stake." As Arthur staggers back In horror at the shameful inference, Blair Stanley with a rapid movement draws his revolver and fires. He would do a double murder, and win an earldom and the diamond from the sky, if he can escape without detection. But the quick arm of Arthur throws up the pistol and as Blair tires he wrenches the weapon from him. To avoid the shame and scandal, even of the inference of the base s]>euking Blair, the frenzied Arthur drags him down the pathway and down the silent village street, as the cocks are crowing, presaging the coming of the dawn. Panting and struggling, the cousins stumble off the Tillage highway and Into the little village graveyard. Their feet sink into a i.ioiiml of *oft earth by an op?u atxi uewly dug grave. Standing panting iuU fating each other with rage and hate in their hearts and on their fact*, ; he young men pause a moment in their i struggle. Then Arthur brings out i.iS .>w<i tijsioi tmd the long white silk Lit.; IlUiVUiiiiUI IUU L iiuco I I VIII J IIO breast pocket "For what you have said about Esther, either you or I must die," Arthur says. "Take one end of this handkerchief and stand across this open grave. Ilold the handkerchief in 1 your left hand, as I hold this corner of I ^ x . .. ..: .. i .1 ?1 1 I 11. .>o\v taae your pisioi, uuu v? uen i j couut to 'Three!* raise ami lire, mid the i one of us left alive will pull the dead man into the grave!" Arthur counts "One!" when the now ! fearful murderer essays to tire. But i the watchful Arthur is too quick for ! him. His pistol speaks lirst, and, Instinctively tugging the handkerchief as he fires, Arthur drags the bleeding Biair into the grave, prone 011 his face. Arthur leaps into the grave after his fallen foe and tears open his shirt to see if the heart still beats, and there, on the breast of Blair Stanley, gleams in the moon rays the evM glitter of the I diamond from the sky. Arthur Stanley bait known Its e\ ery ' aspect, for the Stanley archives are full of it, in print and manuscript, pic; tured and described. "So there it has ! been, in the keeping of m\ cousin!" he' mutters, and hardly realizing what he i j dues, except the baleful gem is his by ! ! every right, he tears it from the neck I ; of the figure in the grave and clambers j ' out and stumbles on his way. , Beside a cross, white and majestic j in the moonlight, he halts. The moon | 1 shines on the diamond in his bloody! hands as he stands by the grave where j I lies, as he believes, his sainted mother. | | Then, feeling the brand of Cain is on i I his brow, Arthur Stanley 2d stumbles | ou, still clutching the diamond from ! the sky in his bloody hands. In the new dug grave Blair Stanley ' moaned and stirred. The wound in ! his forehead had been a glancing one, only sutlicieut to stun him, and now ; as he came to consciousness in the i clammy depths of the grave his first impulse was to clutch wildly at his blood stained and disheveled shirt, bosom. The diamond from the sky was gone! The death of the good old doctor had been all in vain. And Blair Stanley also fled beneath the moon, bootless and in truth blood guilty. At Stanley ball Arthur gained access to the library and shuddered again as he saw the stains on his hands and on the great jewel that seemed to gleam all the brighter for Ihem in the glare of the library lamp. It was not to show the diamond from the sky that all men yearned for; it was to have it, to possess it, even in secret, that caused them to lie, to swindle and even to grope through blood for it. Well had the late Colonel Stanley known the baleful history of the diamond tkut had fallen to the feet of his adventurer ancestor in a meteor. The Stanley "charm against harm" It was j called, and now look what harm It had | already done! Arraying brother against I brother, father against son, la the past, it had broken women's hearts the while, and now a false heir held it against a breast that ached in anguish. Arthur felt instinctively that the dia mond from the sky was responsible for Blair's impugning the good name of sweet Esther, good old Dr. Lee's fair ward, but Arthur did not know that the goisl doctor lay cold In death at the hands of Blair Stanley. The wild thought, the wilder hope, that he might go elsewhere and under a new name, stlH holding to the diamond from the sky, rehabilitate hintself and then seek out Esther in so cret and wed her now possessed Ar ,k ibur. Among Arthur's many extravagances which the lax administration of estates in Virginia i>ermitted a scai>egrace heir was the buying of a costly French automobile. It was a day when automobiles were rarities and luxuries, and I iif StfjinU'V hall I LIU KJULi^ a* w, had preened himself with the thought that he would be the first to own an automobile in all Fairfax county. Arthur reasoned that Blair, who he supposed was lying dead in the grave that had l>oen digged for another, would not be found till perhaps noon. Even then they might not connect his tragic death with the broken guitar and the other signs of struggle in the doctor's garden. Meanwhile the dawn had come and Esther, who had been aroused at the pistol shots, was in great agitation and alarm. Comforted and encouraged by the first glimpse of .dawn, she had descended to the lower hall of the house. The door of the doctor's study stood ajar and she glanced within. There in the dim light of the morning sun filtering through the window shades she saw the doctor in his dressing gown stretched limply across a table. She touched his cheek to rouse him and found it cold. Those pale lips, kindly even in death, could never keep their promise to tell her who and what she was "on the morrow." Here it was the morrow, and the lips that could tell were cold in death. Nancy, the doctors colored servant, was already astir in the kitchen when Esther's cries brought her to the scene; on the heels of the housekeeper came Alex, the doctor's colored horse boy. After the frenzy of their fright had subsided, the negro boy had run through the neighborhood arousing it with news of the tragedy. At llrst Esther and the neighbors ~ - * -A *- * 3 Oftti oenevea roe aociors uniu uau been from natural causes, tbe peaceful passing in of oW age. But tbe disorder of the room, tbe rifled cash box on tbe table, the chisel marked drawer of tbe old bookcase, and tbe opened window, against which tbe drawn sliade flapped In tbe early morning air, mutely told their tale of theft and murder. The sheriff had been sent for and already an eager neighbor had found a crushed guitar in tbe dooryard and the trampling of the feet of what appeared several struggling men in the flower \ uiai uuiuereu me wmik iu iut? >, ^ Wi, She Found Him Cold In Death. doctor's gate. The too*.prints wore of well shod m?n of small and shapely feet, it was reported. No passing rough marauders, no outlaw negro desperadoes had part in the murder and robKsv*??t {?% ill.. am'o ennle nrtn luirl oni* k/KJi J in till" u MVi o niuut>? u</i u(k i uuj such struggled iu deadly combat In his garden, it was whispered. 'l%e matter was mystery as well as murder, and the morbid neighbors gathered in and around the cottage of the dead man and whispered greedily. Meanwhile the dazed and bleeding Blair Stanley had a strange home coming in the night. His mother, that proud, cold woman, worthy mate of the grim judge who had perished strangely in a wild mountain pass nearly a generation agone, loved her son seemingly only through her cold ambitions. "You do not know when a day may come that you may be in a position to save the life of the heir of Stanley," she had said often significantly. Blair understood his mother well. It was known by all the Stanleys that the diamond from the sky had vanished strangely the night Colonel Stanley had expired alone in his library, this preceding by a few days only the tragic death of Judge Stanley in the mountain pass, also, it was thought, alone. ? I This was eighteen years ago, but the Stanley feud was not dead with its protagonists, those elder men of that elder day. It slumbered in the bosom of the younger generation. It smoldered hidden, yet burning not the less, in the bosom of the Judge's taciturn widow, Blair's mother. She had always believed with a bitter suspicion that encompassed all of the long dead Colonel Stanley's friends that Dr. Lee had taken the diamond from the sky in the confusion attending the colonel's sudden demise. Dr. Lee was a relative of Judge Stanley's widow, for all the better families of Fairfax were of kith and kin. The judge's widow believed the doctor held the great diamond In his secret custody if for nothing else than to keep it from the hands of the Judge's family through any legal process they might attempt during the minority of Arthur Stanley 2d. Hence It was that when tne nerve shattered Blair, with ashen face and bloody brow, confessed to his waiting mother that he had seen the diamond in Dr. Lee's aged hands she was not surprised. When he half incoherently admitted to her that the old doctor had died in the struggle for the diamond she expressed no compunction for the doctor's death or revulsion at the deed of her son that caused It. But when he told her that Arthur Stanley, the one life that stood between them and all their ambitious desires, had been in the grasp of Blair did her mood of austere Interest chango to cold fury. ?wv>w1 o -I TTA11? * <-?? ?r?AO oKaQ 1 UU lltTVU JIUL 'iliu J vui i tj/i uu\.uvc to my own." panted her sou. "But it was luck, the devil's luck, that all at Stanley hail possess. I would have killed idm. It was in my mind, in my heart "But he wrested the pistol from my , hand as though from the hand of a child, and he dragged me out of the yard, down the deserted village street to the graveyard to kill me and rob me of the diamond with the ease of a giant." "Well," said his mother, "we must hope for another, better chance. Meanwhile if you are sure that your struggles were not seen you had better lie hidden until I can learn what suspicions are aroused. If you amissed 1 will say y?? are gone to Richmond. Even if Arthur Stanley hears 110 more of you he will think still that he has slain you. He will keep silent." (To be continued). A Wonderful Antiseptic. Germs and infection aggravate ailments and retard healing. Stop that infection at once. Kill the germs and get rid of the poisons. For this purpose a single application of Sloan's Liniment not only kills the pain hut destroys the germs. This neutralizes infection and gives nature assistance by overcoming congestion and gives a chance for the free and normal flow of the blood. Sloan's Liniment is an emergency doctor and should be kept constantly on hand. 25c, 50c. The $1.00 size contains six times as much as the 25c. 5 or 6 doses 666 will break any case of Fever or Chills. Pr'ce. 25 cents. Jl