Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 7, 1928 — page 132: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

272 Reuel sprang up as an icy chill shot from back of his neck to his heels, and flung open the door. . Vincent stepped in. His eyes were tired and sunken, he needed shaving, and he looked generally disheveled, but a faint smile touched the corners of his mouth. “T rather think she’ll pull through,” he said. “Thank God!” Reuel- gasped, and sat down heavily in his chair, “Tt was acrisis! We fought it out through the night. The fever has dropped, and she’s asleep.” “Life is very odd, isn’t it?” said Reuel in a hard, dry voice. “‘ Hector had to give it up—and he might have made something of himself. Poor Hetty has been granted a reprieve, it seems—and I wonder if she wanted it. I wonder, Vincent, what she has to live for? I wonder why we all prayed that she might not die!” CHAPTER XIV. PATERNAL VIGILANCE. INCENT stopped at the Leeds place a few days later and told the family of Hetty’s illness and her encouraging convalescence. They had been snowbound for a long time, exist- ing on short rations—eked out by beef from a cow that Eustace heroically dug out of a snowbank—and there was a general condition of dull apathy. The doctor’s message was not re- ceived graciously. There was some resentment toward Hetty, and they took the report of her long illness with a suspicion of skepticism. There had been a funeral of a sort, arranged with the help of townspeople of the same religious perstiasion as the Leedses, and they looked upon Hetty’s absence from that funeral as a mark of depravity; of all human events a funeral appeared to them as_ the _ supreme test of family loyalty. Vincent was impatient and, having ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. delivered his message, he left the house abruptly, declining to listen to an ar- raignment of the absent daughter. Presently Eustace appeared at the hotel in Lawrence, and found his way to Reuel Tristram’s room. “Mr. Tristram,” he said in a com- manding voice and a manner almost impressive, “ where is my daughter?” “Why, you know well enough where Hetty is,” Reuel answered, bristling a little at the elder man’s peremptory tone. ‘* She’s here, where she’s been all along.” “Here?” challenged the father, af- fecting to survey the small chamber minutely. “I fail to see her. But I intend to see her, Mr. Tristram. Is she hiding? Have you concealed her from her parents?” “Come with me!’ ordered Reuel angrily. “ There’s no mystery here, Mr. Leeds. You know well enough that Hetty is with Mrs. Roberts, where she has been for a long time.” He hustled the man out of his room and guided him unceremoniously to the Roberts apartment. Hetty was sitting up in bed, sup- ported by a mass of pillows, reading a book. She was pale and thin, patheti- cally wraithlike and a little wistful. She was startled at the sudden appearance of her sire, but she greeted him and looked expectantly over his shoulder, thinking that her mother might be there. “The lap of luxury, eh?” he chal- lenged. ‘‘ Feather beds and stuffed counterpanes! Hen feather pillers and white bed clo’es. Boards an’ a straw sack and some horse blankets— them are good enough for my mother, "most eighty years old. Sick, eh? So am J—so’s your mother—all of us. Half frozen, half starved—an’ no hotel to go to—but we got our pride left, praise God!” Vincent stepped into the apartment in time to hear the last of the oration. “‘ See here, Leeds,” he cried angrily, “T won’t have it! She’s not well 8A 0(0)(6) com (Cc <S (C@