THE WEST SHORE,
any higher lUtion. It awml to br that to sell ci
gars over a counter to Rood looking gentlemen was the
highest ambition of life. She gowned herself gaily,
aud sffecU'd pretty, ariitocratio airs, speaking often
of her gramlpappa and grandmamma, as she had
heard the girlt at achool do.
Although not in the leant tender hearted, she fan
cied ahe felt a vsgue pity for Jsinic, and grew accus
tomed, after a while, to hi ugliueits. She found him
lei repulsive than at first, and extremely useful Not
that there was ever a time, though, that she did not
wonder why (1ml should have created any one so dis
agreeable to the souses.
There came such a happy light to Jamie's eyes
that summer, and such odd, jojful sougs to his lips,
that people used to wonder what that ugly little mor
tal could hava to make him happy. As for him, he
never thought about it himself nor realized that any
thing new and swwt had come into his life. Only
sometimes he would say to Miss Jennie
" 1 dou't thiuk I ever saw sech skies es we hev
here, nur sich sunsets, nur sech mountains; an' the
wiud, somehow, of eveniu's, jest seems to say the soft
rat, sweetest things es ever 1 hear. W'y, jest to hear
it come sighiu' rouu' the garden, a-takin' up all the
damlyliueV down au' carryiu' it away w'y, it jest
makes me wisht thet 1 could write, an' toll tho world
how bxautiful it is."
" Much the world would care, poor, daft fellow,"
the girl thought, her mind bout upon dollars and
euta, Hhe had uo understanding nor comprehension
of the wonderful things Chuck Olalla saw on every
laud, that nature spread out The down of the dan-
delion, indeed! What was it? A bunch of nothing
tlat the wimla carried away and scattered broadcast
over the laud.
When she saw him staudiog at his back door. eaz.
lug. eutraucvd, at a moon of cold silver rising out of
a bank of orauge clouds, she would steal softly into
the houa not to disturb him, aud whisper to her
mother that IW Jamie was surely daft."
Hummer passed. Autumn, too, came and went,
and whit wiuW dwelt in the Cracker creek mining
camp, Uad he tnB lots simple-minded and less no-LU-hiufavl,
he would have known that no mortal can
bo perfectly happy for uiauy mouths; but he gave no
thought to the morrow. Due cold day, when the suow
was pilej high about their doors and almost to the
r.fs, he thought perhaps Mis. Jouuie might be out
of wood, aud he went iu to ask if he ahould got U)m
for her. bhe was not iu the .hop, Ml Le
through to her eviy sitting room, where she always
sat, sowing or reading a novel, t, j,
JUeameto mM him with gUg color and
ahj happhew U hr f jr., aud for one bl,, wnd
the poor fellow's heart almost ceased to beat, in the
intoxicating belief that this sweet confusion was all
for him. Then, with a sadden revulsion of feeling
that made everything hazy to his eyes, he saw some
one else a tall, finely made man, sitting very near
the ebair which had been occupied by MiBS Jennie;
and, somehow, all in a moment, the whole miserable
truth rushed upon him and crushed him with its dead
weight As in a looking-glass, he saw the days and
months which had passed since she first came, sweet
and cool and dainty as a mountain flower, into hit
dingy little shop. And in those days he saw now
only one thought, one aim, one feeling love of her.
What was he that he had dared to so love her,
who was as far above him as the snow flower that
grew at the top of the mountain was above the blue
violet that grew at the base and turned its lowly head
upward.
She had been kind to him 0, alwayl He could
not remember a time when she had not greeted him
with a smile and a kindly word but now he saw the
d.ffereoce. The soft flush, the radiant eye, the tender
shyness were all for this strong, young giant, who
could almost have crushed her in one powerful hand,
And he weak, stunted, as seldom was man created
by Ood 0, kind heaven, he had dared to love her.
" It was th th the wood," he faltered, in a brok
en way. Then, unable to say more, he turned blind
ly about and shambled, as fast as his uneven limbs
could carry him, out of her presence.
" It's only Chuck Olalla, the lame shoemaker,
dear," the girl said to her lover, apologetically. " Be
lives next door, and he is not quite right iu his mind
sees things in the skies and hears voices in the
winds, and all that sort of things."
Then they forgot him and talked of pleasanter
things. And Jamie 1 Through his dingy shop ha
went, haltingly, thence into the back room, locking
the door behind him. In his eyes was the look that
comes into the eyes of a faithful dog that has been
struck a cruel and unexpected blow by a beloved
baud, and in his soul the deepest suffering that can
bo borne by man. He stretched himself, face down
ward, on his hard, unkept bed, and once in awhile an
awful sob Bhook his whole weak frame.
" 0, God 1 " he cried, at last, in the voice of one
who writhes beneath some fearful torture, " To think
thet a man shud be 's I be-ugly an' haltin' an' hid
jus, so's no woman 'd keer to look at a seoon time,
an'-an'-then to think thet I shud be able to keer
fer her, jot the same other men I Beoms 's if I
cau't War it, nohow."
After a long, long time he heard her step outside,
Md her sharp, imperative rap on the door.
t