TIIE OREGON SUNDAY JOURNAL,' PORTLAND. SUNDAY MORNING STEPHEN THURBER had no notion of falling in with a great sociologic movement when he 'decided to sell hit farm in Wet Coolly and move into Bluff Sidinir: he merely yielded to tht im portunities of his wife and daughter, who looked laway to the prim little village down the Valley as t Ubinuior land of leisure and of possible social triumph. ,' It was a lonely place for the women that Stephen' generously admitted. A long ridge, some five hundred jfeet high, cut them off from the railway, and all the iyoung people were leaving by twos and threes, as fast as they grew up, and the roads were very bad, and visi tors few. So at last he sighed and said, " All right, mother, well To, but I'll declare I hate to give up the farm I don't fivnow what in time I'll do with-myself." ' Stephen, now that he was about to lose his treas ' jures, recalled Martha's delight as she watched the work linen set the old oaken slab in its place. He re-lived the . iparty she gave when the first fire was laid, and thrilled to remember how pretty she looked as she touched a bnntch to the shavings and recited a little verse from hThe Hanging of the Crane." She was cheerful and, I'Stcphea believed, happy; but when she went away he began to realize that she had never really taken root in the West and now that he was growing old, he him jself began to dwell more and more in the land of his kouth, his thoughts returned often to his rocky New .. ulampsbire intervale. F Yes, it was hardest of all to loose the tendrils of lis heart from the hearth, for though Serilla had re arranged and redecorated after her own heart, Martha's slreplace remained unchanged. "I'll let you have your way in most things, Scrilly, liut I want this room to look as it does now, just as she left if As the time for the migration drew near, Stephen stole away from the disordered kitchen to muse sadly before the fire. He had consented to a " vandue," and was willing Serilla should sell all the furniture they had, except a few pieces that had been Martha's, and cs there was no demand for the irons and brasses around the fireplace, he expected to box them up as keepsakes. The cottage in town seemed to grow smaller after they moved into it; but Serilla and Cariss were de lighted with its snugness and went about extolling its "advantages" with fluent tongues. "It's small, of icourse; but what do we want with a big house? It's just that much less work to take care of. Besides here j,we have a pump right in the kitchen, and a furnace, land a bathroom, and- everything is as neat as a pin ., -na crar-darfcrcoiwfc"- By June he was settled into a certain daily groove. You want to just lay back and rest," said Hiram Fox, another veteran of the plow; "that's what all the rest ; of us are doin,' and we're doin' it conscientiously. The town is full of 'tired farmers' like us." : i Sometimes at night, when his wife thought him doz ing, hevas really back in the old Coolly house watch ing the blazing logs, his mind filled with a delicious sad mess, his eyes wet with tears. What was it that had ; .gone out of his life? v Here he sat in a perfectly com jfortable room, possessing a horse and a carriage, with ,'an abundance to 'eat and no cares and yet the past, with all his toil, so called to him that his throat ached at the thought of it. Oh, if he could only re-live it all I In those dear days the wind was fierce, the woods of Winter desolate; but Martha's face shone like a star, .and the old heart rendered each night with his children ! a poem. Work, was Jutrd in those days; but rest was ' j sweet; Hunger was'Tceen; but eating brought no ill ness in its train. ' He was loyal to Serilla, the mother of his children; jfcut Martha was the wife of his youth, the one chosen wholly of his heart and her fireplace came to typify jail that was sweetest and most poetic in his life and in !the lives of his children. It was an altar. Around it 'they had gathered when the corn was cribbed and the cattle housed tor the night. In its light they had danced when the threshing was over and at Thanksgiv ing time. i He awoke with a start. f " What will we do on Thanksgiving Day and at Christmas?" he asked, one night " We can't all get .into this little box of a place. There ain't a room in the nouse we can au sit down in, and it we could, wed have nothing but a hole in the floor to look at. I de clare it clean disheartens me." Serill was a little dashed, but replied, comfortably, wen manage somenow, i guess. We can't have but a part of the children at a time, that's alL We can bid your folks for Thanksgiving and my folks for Christ snas." This rankled in Stephen's mind, and thereafter he de spised his toy house. It was a good enough tenement a place to rent for a while, but as a home in which to grow old, it was revolting in spite of its shining paint nd spick and span new furniture. In reality it held out no charm, no poetry, no associa tions; it was as rectangular as a dry-goods box, and as child born in such a house is cheated of its hirthnVht ivi uuu, wiuc rooms ui up uy tne aancmg nrengnt ; robbed of the sagas the great trees chant as they roar joutside in the wild wind deprived of all shadow, all j suggestion. Something of this flitted through Stephen's uiougnr, inougn ne could not give it voice. and homeless. Among all 'his fellow. Stephen alone began to perceive that to seek comfort for the body in new things left the mind filled with longing for old things left it comfortless and unhoused. .. So, while outwardly he remained the same, inwardly he was filled with recollections which made him tremble with their power. He greeted his neighbors with a smile which grew each month a little more absent-minded a little more wistful and when he wrote to his son in Chicago, he said: "Our house is about as big as your hat, and it's nice and neat, but we can't have any Christ mas this year no place to set a table for more'n six. I'm trying hard to pass the time"; and as he wrote his glasses grew misty with his tears. But one day while he was, sitting alone by his win dow at sunset, when the blue-jays were in flight and the butternut leaves were falling, Stephen' permitted him self a most heroic dream. In imagination he said to a contractor, " I want my old house across the hill I , tight down and give him a little help yoa bein' an au '.thority on fireplaces. We all hung our stockings in chimney corners back East, but I'll be dinged if I can remember just how you put em- in. weeks of burning desire and irresolution, he had broken ground. . '.' ' ". . " No one suspected his connection with the building his plan was too audacious, too far removed from the It's a funny thing to me," said Hiram. "In the practical, everyday, life of Bluff Siding to be imagined davs when we all had fireplaces we were crazy for stoves, and now when we are. all peryided with, furnaces some people want fireplaces. You'd think a family that had mgh about froze to death in front of a hole in the wall would fight hy of 'era thereafter." " But they have their good p'ints," said Stephen, eag erly. "Recollect -the mug o' cider on the hob, and the by anyone ; and yet he was tormented with dread of the storm of shrill astonishment ana protest which wouia encircle him, when his 'secret should be disclosed. " His hope and comfort lay in the belief that a visit to the new house .all complete and. read to move into would subdue and win his wife. Of Cariss he had no fear. He also, covertly, depended upoirhe sympathy .chestnuts in the ashes, and the apple parin's and the and support of his "Chicago Boy." as he called John;' dances I tell you there's nothin' takes the place of a ' but Albert, who was a hard-working dentist in Tyre, good old ', 1 . ' ' with a large and annually increasing family (and who "Well, you can have hot cider and apple bees without ' was casting forward very definitely, to his share of the a hole in the wail you can sung a yearling tnrougn. estate; AiDert wouia iook. wiw aisuvor pn tne ex- What's the matter with a base-burner r" Stephen was stubborn. "Won't do. " A base-burner 'V:,-. ' ' ' V "' .. - ' penditure of so much money in so foolish a fashion. As for Pilcher and old Hiram and the) rest of the boys 3 s V VV i i 1 III ! ft' 6 V i f V' H 4 4 V i K v. V V i v. . - a y "tut" " ySMyyyyM s i? 4 1' AH mm THE WINTERS OF THAT FAR TIME WERE MADE AS CHEERY AS SUMMEES BV THE BLAZE Of THE HEARTH. I 1 f j 1 II - i a t m i iuoiner,. ne saia one day, I wish we had one .room big enough to turn round in, and a rag carpet and some old-fashioned chairs and a fireplace " i "There you go again about that fireplace," exclaimed his wife irritably. "Nobody has fireplaces now, and how are you going to have a big room in this house?" " I'll build one. if you say so. "Nonsense. This house is all right, plenty big enough Tor us with Cariss likely to go off any minute. And 'as for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we can go to the i hotel and get dinner, or take 'em in squads here at home." ,, ; . i "That wouldn't do," he protested. "It wouldn't do ; at all It wouldn't seem natural or right for us to eo to a hotel on such days. We'd ought 'o have all such meals tt home." " Well, you wouldn't build a big house just to use for "lankrivinff. would voti ?" "Id' know but I would," he answered, sturdily. . " I :f know but it would be just about as good a wav to rr-eni our money as any other. I m sick o this little 1 f.sr-.n I rt't titiv th fsrrill mA . don't care what jt costs. I am worth thirty thousand dollars, and if it takes half of it I want my home. My women folks will never go back to the Coolly with me, and I can't live there alone, so you must bring the old house fireplace and all across the ridge and put it up under the trees somewhere. I want it just as it was can you do this ?" In this imagined conversation he was able to express himself easily ; so he went on to say, " I ain't got but a little while to stay here and I want to spend my days in peace I want to be comfortable in my mind and my mind ain't easy in this little box; I want a roomy room with shadows in the corners and a fire to watch when I don't want to read or talk-r-I want the old room " And when his wife broke in on this magical re very he looked up with eyes so scared and pleading that she wondered and sharply cried out, "What's the matter, Stephen? You lock as if you'd seen a ghost" " There, mother-r-there ! mebbe I have, he answered, and turned away to hide the quiver of his lips. One day he came in from his usual trip up town visibly excited, and after he had taken off his coat and hting" up his hat he began : ' " Well, somebody has bought the Merrill place." Serilla looked up from her sewing. "Who?" "Hiram said he heard that a man from Tyre, a con tractor, had bought it and was going to build on specu lation." The Merrill place, as it was called, was the remnant of a fine farm which had once been the pride of old Abiter MerrilL The house, standing among magnificent elms, commanded ten scares of land all the rest had been sold away by the heirs. The outbuildings were in decay and the yard was littered with rusty machinery, but it was a beautiful site, and Stephen had long ad mired it He never .passed it without planning what he You've got to I'll admit you is such a sullen sort o thing. No, sir. have the names a-leapin and a-crackin . 1 II admit you need other heat," he added, "when the weather's too cold; but I just believe we'd all be healthier if we went back to the drafty old fireplaces. It did keep the room ventilated the bad air was all swept up the chimney." " Yes, 'long with the cat and the almanac and the weekly newspaper," remarked Hiram. "My stars I but the draft in our old chimney would draw nails out of oak planks. We had to put a stun on the Bible." "But we didn't have consumption in those days r " "We had somethin' worse," piped Pilcher. "What's that?" ; "Chilblains, by cracky!" And then they cackled together, and the Com mittee broke up. " What's this I hear ?" inquired Serilla, sharply, a few days later. " Has the owner of the Merrill place asked Jane Kittredge to go into that house?" " I guess that's right, mother." Serilla snorted, "Well, that's a fool thing to do how come it? Did you advise it?" . " Well, no Mr, Hill was sort o' inquiring 'round for someone, and as Amos was sick and Jane " "I knew it! I knew you had a hand in that " "Well, why not? Amos is my brother-in-law Tve a right to help him and Jane's a good housekeeper; you. can't "deny that 1" , Serilla turned away. She and Jane were a little "aidgewise" toward each other partly because Amos was Stephen's first wife's brother and partly because Jane herself was quite as sharp-tongued as any one. Serilla had grazed her husband's larger secret, but had not really touched it and he went out to the barn to think the situation over. cance a iig it we want to. .No, sirreel loa don t ketch me linn' on the edge of would do if he owned it Now he said: "Well, I'm icvrn, wnn no siaewaiKi. i want to be right in the glad somebody is going to im improve it, but I wish yoa 'j?rtnc ngnts ana an. " I could put in the telephone "I wont hear of it, Steve. I came away from the f.rm to live rrr town, and I don't want no half-way busi ifi in mine." i '.yben surrendered to her wi3 and made no further cr TAint - j l ey took their Thankseiving dinner at the hotel f i oa the way home Senila said, "There! For once : i r-r 1 i-rs, Cariss, we don't have to thick of Thanks l - ? d nrxr di'hes.". " iUt s r cht." answered Cariss, "and yet it doesn't r j a tit 1 U Tha:.k giving, does it,ttr ' ca !.d net answer, for h was far away fa the f . ;. t f the - - - - - - - ' trajk liirg to grow e!d in d.!y Iaboir, but n as sad to grow cl whh nothing to d- ' To this Serilla made no answer. Stephen had been " kind o' dauncy " all through the hot weather, but the work going forward on the Mer rill place seemed to interest him. He fell into the habit of walking down there of a morning, and Serilla was glad of it, though she took her fimg at him and his cronies. "It's a wonder to me that yon and Hiram and old mart Pilcher don't get a tent and camp ot in the Mer rill yard. Seems to me if I was that builder I'd order yoa off the premises." " "He comiders our advice valuable, mother." "IH bet he doesT he cornful!y repJied. A few days later old Hiram rerWled to "the Com mittee on the tnirere," that Mr. Hi'.l, the raider, wi futtipg in a tig chimney and frep'ace. "He says a'i the ritv people btrt 'rm thrt A s." "iVeik, dow, Steve." sjd richer, "jog better go The truth was that all this buying, planning and building were stanzas in a poem of Stephen Thurber's imagining. He was the " owner," Mr. Hill was merely his confederate, his blind. To the sympathetic young fellow he had gone (while on a visit to Tyre) and to him had explained his needs. " Now, I cant move the old bouse over from the Coolly, that's out of the question, but I want you to go and look it over and build me another exactly like it Make it just as it was mhen I went into it for the f rt time, . to that when I sit down by the fire I can jest imagine I "rrr home again." He paused t?:ere, for his voice failed him. Th it was' his secret pin a ene of homeJetsnes. All the subtle rharni ct his life, all the poetry of the. part, wai associated with the home beyond the ridge, and the eme cf loss grew m power cf appeal day by day as his palms softened srhh 1!enes and his cheeks lost their coat of tan. He wis bitterly tmhappy in his present, nd in crr.-vmrt his face ttrmed more nd rwre fcllv toward the lore! dart of his youth. The thongft of grwfng old on a ffty-for lot in a crsrrped. he was prepared to weather their laughter for It would be good-natured and, besides, the joke would be partly on them, for could he not say, "I fooled ye, though, every, man jack of ye!" But the strain, of his duplicity wore upon him, and . Serilla grew so concerned about his silence, his abstrac tion, that she wrote to John to come up and see what was the matter with his father. t ' John came, and in answer to his questions, Stephen said :" There's nothin' the matter with me, my son, only I ain't got nothin' to do. I miss the old place." "Well, you are in snug quarters," John admitted, as he looked about the little house. "It's all very nice, mother, but it isn't a bit like home." Serilla was defiant. "Did you s'pose 1 was goin' to end my days in Wet Coolly, twelve miles from the railroad? I was just as sorry to leave the old house as he was. But, my stars! I couldn't stand the strain. It's all right for you to talk; you can come and go, but I had to stay there Winter and Summer " John was generous enough to acknowledge that it was a lonesome place for a woman in Winter. " Lonesome ! You might as well be buried." " I s'pose you're right, mother. It's all a part of a sorrowful exodus"; and leaving a, prescription for his father he went back to the city, quite uninstructed in the real cause of' his father's loss of health. The point toward which Stephen was definitely working was. a grand house-warming- on New Year's Day; and he wished to surprise John especially, for hi would certainly understand, i . It was a time of anxiety, but it was. a time of great joy. Each day as the bouse took shape he rode by or sat in the yard to feast upon it. From the porch in front to the little garden fence on its roof, it was exactly like the old house 4he windows were tne same, the chim ney rose through the shingles at the same point. Some times he went inside, but the litter "there troubled hint,' and, besides,, he wanted to wait until all was com- ' pleted, in order that the impression might come to ' him in fulness of power. . His notion in getting Jane and her husband in was at first due to his desire to have some one to put the place to rights pending his confession to Serilla con fession which became each day more difficult for as the days slipped by and the house c eared completion he became absorbed in the idea of restoring the fur nishing of the house as it was when Martha was alive, an idea which came to him as be sat with Amos and his wife among their furniture.' He was surprised to fmf a numtr of pieces of Martha's "fnrnitnre which he hadjri.en them after her death, and he asked Jane to see if she could find the armchair he had let her sister have. . As the day for wanning the hearth drew near Stephen fairly trembled with joyous excitement. The builder was paid rrn and gnie: the yard was " slirk as a whistle." and the br new hone stfvwt rotd and while and rrand feigVco'cred lrtti bouse appaed hiraand, so. after trader the bare branches of the eiins.Tfc sadirons and one day the mantel were in place, but Stephen had not yet per .rnitted himself the luxury of sitting down before the fire he wanted to wait till the room was furnished and Martha s rugs in place. , , ' Jl uKtiTly- tI!.tdV; in dcr,"to help Amoi" move in, heVxplamed to his wife. ; s raW daJvrcl?udy. -v-ith- stron north wind andAVlnfer seemed in the air and when the night be gan to fall and Jane s furniture was sparsely distributed r ( Jane herself being busy m the kitchen). Stephen lit the fire;on his hearth and sat down before it with a thrill of satisfaction, j : . , As he gaited the spell of that which he had. wrought tell upon hint. The first stanza of his poem was being . sung by. the roaring flames. On the white walls the golden light was flickering and along the ceiling the ' shadows of the tall andirons danced grotesquely, fa miliarly, as of old. rThe mantel with itr carven figures and its candles and vases seemed unchanged." The vi, mc ciuij uuisiuc was me same. ' Tears dimmed his eyes, a big lump filled his throat. , For a mohjent he had the exaltation of the artist. He seemed to have triumphed over time's decrees as the ,. poet does. It appeared that he had actually restored his home, reconstructed the past, so that Martha might at ' any moment steal into the room,' light of step as of - old, to sit on the arm of his chair and to ask with that tenderness of sympathy which always melted his heart, "Tired, Stephen?" and lay her cheek against his shoulder. N He loved Serilla: he honored and Cared for her as the mother of his children ; but Martha was the wife of his ; youth, the Madonna of his dreams." She was associated with the mystery of his life, the dew of his morning. The whole earth was young that marvellous May when they two adventured into this suave and fertile land. The oerfume of wild honey, the song of larks in flowery meadows lay in her name, and around her fireplace still lingered such heartiness of cheer, such neighborliness as the world no longer knew. Ob, those glorious pioneer OBVJI ; He sat so long in dreams that the red sky and fire grew gray ana tne gooa people til the kitchen became - uneasy, ana Amos came and brought a lamp-, and then with an absent-minded smile the dreamer rose, stiff with tne cniu oi age, ana went DacK to bis acknowledged home, to the wife of his present He came again the next day, and the next, and the ,s is-jsi ivuig niM uiuiaiic pain ana pleasure nis story in stone and steel, his epic in pungent pine, basking in the glow of his fire, forgetting his gray hair and jneCTelejs Jimb From theses secret delicious excursions into the past, these com munions with the dead, he returned to his wife and daughter with reluctance, with a certain gnilty fear. Without meaning to be .disloyal, he began to find Serilla s brusque ways intolerable, and .had moments when he resolved to keep his secret , He shrank from her sharp voice, her prosaic and harsh comment He was like a bridegroom, jealous of the very name of his tove. Amos had guessed Stephen's proprietorship of the houser but being a man of perception, he had cautioned his wife to yield no hint of their secret knowledge ; and Jane was not merely discreet; she was sympathetic. She added in many little ways to Stephen's enjoyment of his home. The fire was always blazing on the hearth when he came in, and he was left alone for the most part; only upon invitation did she enter the room to sit with him before his shrine. This understanding was mutual Stephen knew that they were in possession of his secret, but he gave no outward sign ; indeed, he kept up the fiction by greeting them as his hosts, and even went so far as to discuss the coming of "the owner" in the spring. He always ex pressed gratitude for a chance to sit against the fire. " I don't know what I'll do when you move out," he said once. "Well, IT! have one comfortable winter, any way," he ended. Serilla deeply resented his truancy, which she as cribed to the influence of Jane Kittredge, and a barrier of distrust and defense had risen between them. Cariss, involved with the young life of trie village, gave very lit- -tie thought to the matter, though she occasionally de fended her father. "If he gets any fun out of Aunt Jane, let him," she rather flippantly remarked; and the tone of her" plea did not incline Stephen to confide in her. John would understand, but he hesitated about writing. " I'll wait till he comes up a-Christmas," he decided. His old cronies found him distinctly less companion able, more"remote.t A settled sadness, a growing reserve difficult of analysis, had come into his daily, greeting. He told fewer stories, he was less often at the grocery store, and his laugh was seldom heard. ' All this change they referred to ill-health, and their comment was gentle and commiserating. ' . " Stephen is failin' fas" remarked Pilcher, one day. "The cold weather seems to grip him. It wouldn't surprise me to hear any day that he was taken flat down. I doubt if he stands many more of these winters." Hiram looked up with a smile which was at once defiant and wistful. " We're all in the same boat and driftin' the same way," he said ; and then they spoke with resolute cheer of the weather and the price of fire wood. , November pasted without any change of plan on Stephen's part, and December, was half-way gone before he broke silence. Being moved by a letter from John, : he suddenly said one night, quite in his old, hearty way. ' " I tell you what you do, Amos. Yoa and Jane send out invitations to John and Albert's folks and to all of Serilla's kin, bidding 'em all to a Christmas dinner. Say to the boys that, seein's their mother haint got room ' enough, I m kind o' goin in with you here. You can ... . say I'm helpin' out on the turkey and things, and the v children's stockin's, and that they can stay here part of 'em at least We can all get together here in this big roonv " A lump came into his throat and he did not fini$li- Jane and Amos fell in with the suggestion quite as if it were a command, and withdrew to write out the let ters of invitation, leaving Stephen alone in the glow of the fire, for, the walk that day had been a stern battle with both wind and snow, and. he seemed older and feebler. - . A couple of hours later, as they went downstairs to lock the doors and put out the lights, Jane said. " Look ia and see how the fire in the big room is, while I see to the furnace. My, hear that wind! " Amos opened the door, but paused on the threshold and beckoned with a smile. "Come here, Jane," he whispered. " I thought I didn't hear him go out Jane looked over his shoulder with a word of surprise . " .The fire had burned low. In a deep bed of ashes a big oaken gnarl still smoldered, sending up now and again a single leaping jet of flame, and by its fitful light Stephen was intermittently revealed, deep-sunk in his armchair, his gray head turned laxly aside, his gaunt hands hanging rmptilv by bis side. "Better' wake him, said Jane. "IIeIl4ke a chil He'd better sleep here to-night." Arms went over and touched the sleeper on the shoulder. He did not repond. Amos laid his band against the grizzled cheek, and turned wt.h a start toward his wife, a look of awe on his face a look, I gesture which told his story instantly and wtib com pleteneM. ...... i Stephen was with'-Manha. and the pt and the j present were to him as the rooming and toe evening of j