The Argosy, Vol. 61, No. 4 — page 58: what you’re looking at

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

616 grave upon which to strew flowers on Decoration Day. The late Burke — or, to speak more correctly, the probably late Burke—Will- iam by name, had, it seems, failed in business when Gladys was a mere baby two or three years old, and, with that fatuous confidence in which men regard it as easy to dig the precious metals out of the ground without previous experi- ence or apprenticeship, had set forth to recoup his fortune in the gold-fields of the West. For a time letters and remittances ar- rived regularly from him; then both, especially. the latter, appeared at longer and more infrequent intervals. He was working into a wilder coun- try, he explained, where mails were often hard to catch, and where those that did go through were apt to fall a prey to the Indians ; but young Washburn suspected, after a perusal of some of these epistles, that the wild, free life was laying a stronger spell upon him, gradually loosening the ties of home and kindred. Then, at last, the letters ceased alto- gether. Mrs. Burke waited for double the usual length of time, hoping against hope for some word, until finally, be- coming seriously alarmed, she wrote to his last point of address to make in- quiries. After some delay, a message came back, stating that Burke, with a com- panion named Sardon, had started out on a prospecting tour late the previous fall, and that since that time nothing had been heard from either of them. It was possible, the correspondent pointed out, that they might have continued their journey in the spring on up into the un- explored country to the north; but the likelihood, he was forced to confess, was that both had perished in the winter’s snows. What was Mrs. Burke to do? was a lone woman, without money to prosecute a search, and she had a little daughter dependent on her for support. The problem of existence was there to be met and grappled with face to face; so she opened a boarding - house, and, meeting with fair success, managed in time to scrape together a modest com- petence. A kindly, energetic woman, with a She. THE ARGOSY. faded prettiness, she was when Wash- burn came to know her, the last person one would suspect of harboring una¥ail- ing regrets or sentimental fancies. Yet, as he progressed into intimacy with the family, he learned that the ques- tion as to whether her husband might not still be alive remained, even after fifteen years of silence, a very vital mat- ter with her, and she was continually wondering whether she ought not to use the little money she had saved in an effort to trace him. The young attorney vigorously dis- suaded her from any such course. Her husband was not only presumed by the law to be dead, he argued, but was more than likely so in fact. It was not in the nature of man, he insisted, to keep silence for so long, or without cause practically to desert a lov- ing wife and an only child. Within fifteen years Burke must either have gone broke, or struck it rich, and in either case she would have heard from him. On the other hand, the perils of fron- tier life, the unusual hazard of the ex- pedition upon which he had started, and the fact that his correspondence had ceased just at that time, formed a chain of circumstantial evidence almost con- clusively proving his demise. It was idle, Washburn told her, to cling to the fancies she was entertaining, or to dream for a moment of squander- ing the little heritage which should right- fully go to her daughter in a vain and bootless enterprise; and so well did he urge his views that Mrs. Burke, at last convinced of her widowhood, purchased a veil forthwith and went into weeds of the deepest and most somber dye. After that his landlady made a point of consulting him whenever a trouble- some question arose in her affairs, and he thus came to know the exact condi- tion of her resources. At this time Gladys Burke was a girl of eighteen, fresh and fair as an opening rosebud, and with a head full of senti- mental fancies and romantic moon- shine; and Washburn—plausible, hand- some, and engaging—served as a trellis upon which to hang all her girlish dreams and all her ideas of knightly chivalry. ECO OO Cc (©