A Woman Named Smith

ne old gentleman with frosty Scotch eyes and the complexion of a pair of washed khaki trousers. Chaos reigned in Hynds House t

knees of his black broadcloth trousers, took off and wiped his spectacles with great thoroughness and deliberation upon a large silk ha

icted to lawsuits. You wouldn't think an old soul of almost a hundred could find v

had been automatically closed by the death of the pl

" "Hope," and "Charity"-which her father had commissioned a visiting artist to paint, and had then presented to St. Polycarp's, with the s

rought by the donor's daughter, who averred that the church had lost all right and title to the paintings by an action directly contrary to her father's will, and insisted that they should be turned over to herself as sole heiress. It w

ce old lady ran up extra-sized bill-boards. Every time the Zionist brethren looked out of their side windows of a Sunday, they had ample opportunity to learn considerable about the art of advertising on bill-board

boards besought them to smoke only certain cigarettes and to be sure to look for the tradem

formed the side attractions; and in the center front was the monument, a stone of stu

one is

e Aff

sba Hynd

rate the M

ect Gentleman

Bloo

PP

r Sophronisba," Alicia said with convicti

respassings" upon the closed, barbed-wire lane behind Hynds House. As the strip in question was not a public thoroughfare, and Mrs. Scarlett had rock-

best-paying ones in Hyndsville. As to closing the lane, Miss Smith, let me remind you that Doctor Geddes, although an estim

comes down. He may use the lane

cholas Jelnik, if you please. It was Mrs. Scarlett's wish that you should be full

they are her relatives and she hated her relatives. I am to vex the souls of harmless Christians with bill-posters of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and I'm to pay taxes on a lot that's been turned into a cemetery for a hound dog. I'

ing to an anchor, something like Britannia-Rules-the-Waves

made an odd noi

r, asked, 'Mamma, who is that big woman up there with the pick-axe?' And

painted in vermilion, which in plain English is Scarlett!" A covenanting gleam shot into his frosty eyes, and the old fighting Scotch

e in peace with my neighbors. St. Polycarp's people may

t over the parchment-like face? It see

st judgment. And now, please, let

bor, and we said so. He had helped us with our garden, and it was he

ard Hynds, a great grandfather of his. Did he te

thi

ed to say that Hynds House never should have come to Freeman Hynds, Mrs. Scarlett's father; but to Richard Hynds, his elder brother-that same Richard whose initials are

the eldest son. Primogeniture is of course foreign to American ideas, but this is an old house, Miss

ense of duty, and the nicest notions of honor. He had two sons, Richard, and the younger

ffairs, and meticulously exact in all his dealings; not warm-hearted, perhaps, but just. But as if the bad

eath of life to such men. Despite these defects there is no doubt that his was one of those personalities that win love without effor

ould have done very well, very well indeed, in the Golden Hind with Drake, or in the Jesus with Morgan. He did not fit in a gentler generation, an

lways been a wealthy and powerful family. The theft of those jewels was no trumpery affair. For generations they had been adding to that collection-sometimes a lustrous pearl,

eldom. It was upon the occasion of a ball to be given in honor of Freeman's twenty-first birthday that the question of wha

rative and desperate. He had been heard to ask his mother if she intended wearing what he called 'the Hynds fortune' at Freeman's ball. He kne

onsidered dishonor. Within reach of this young man's hand are certain very valuable properties which he might even consider his own, since they would in time

ine, raised in this house, believed him guilty. His mother and his wife believed in his innocence and refused to hear a word again

ible stain upon a stainless name. Therefore this father, who was at the same time a just and good man, disinherited his favorite child and eldest son. House, slaves, lands, money, the great positio

as brought forth to scourge them all. For Richard, desperate, distracted, careless of what happened to him, rode out one da

er's 'Saint's Rest'-down on the library table and fell as if lightning had struck him. Apoplexy, it was sai

several years older than her cousins, to whom she was greatly attached. The trouble so preyed upon her that she became melancholy, and one fine day disappeared and was never afterward found. There was great hue and cry made for her, and m

jewels were found intact, and Richard Hynds's innocence thereby incontrovertibly established, Hynds House as it stood should revert to him as eldest son, after

o is sorry for the fatted calf, and the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea, and Esau swindled out of his birthright; ha

nt until he is proved guilty. In practice, he

known further?-nothing that would justify his moth

e and died from the injuries sustained. He recovered consciousness for a few minutes before he died; some said he never really regained it. Be that as it may, the dying man cried out, in a voice of great anguish and affliction: 'Richard!

had taken his brother's place as Jacob took Esau's. Richard's wife, of course, was of these latter. She went to her grave a passionate believer in the innocence of her husband, whom she averred to have been a deeply wronged and cruelly used man; and, for heaven'

very memory of her uncle, and hated her uncle's wife, the woman who doubted and led others to doubt her father's ho

hter Sarah Hynds married Professor Doctor Max Jelnik, the celebrated Viennese alienist, whom she met abroad. Your next-door neighbor is Sarah's son, born somewhere in Hungary, I believe. Bot

ake a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It displeased her that he should come to Hyndsville. She thought it showed a malignant nature and a peculiar shamelessness that he chose to r

ny places, Mr. Jelnik, just come to Hyndsville, thoughtlessly and perhaps ignorantly crossed the sacred Scarlett boundaries. U

er peoples' yards like a thievish

ed up, uncovering

our pardon, Madame: I did not mean

! rotten bad blood! You've a bad face, young man: a scoundrelly face, the face of a fellow whose grandfather robbed his

rance. All he could do was to stand still and stare and stare and stare. He had never seen anybody so old-she was nearly a hundred, and looked a thousand-and he stared at the old, old, wrinkled, yellow face, the unhuman face, in which the beady black eyes burned with wicked fire; at the nearly bald he

ve and red in a youthful and beautiful body: and she what she was-she fell into one of those futile and dreadful fits of rage to which the evil old are

ly. In some subtle manner she understood, for she jerked herself out of her anger, and fell silent, regarding him with a glance as brilliantly, deadly bright as a tarantula's. The cold, relentle

forbidding him to enter the grounds of Hynds House without the written

said, are good haters,"

e to me," said I without, I

t was far better for the estate to fall into the hands of a sensible woman like yourself than into the keeping of a young man with what foolis

ortune to meet it. One trifling scamp I have in mind, painted. A house, a fence, a barn, even a sign-board? Not at all, but messes he called 'The Sea,' one d

e wrote poetry, if you please! The little wretch wrote poetry! That's what the artistic

. "Who would have thought the old ma

mith, instead of to Nicholas Jelnik, I heartily approved. Understand, I have no personal bias, no animosity against this young man; but he is, I am told, more or less of an artist, and

pinion with mi

he injunction against him doesn't hold water

ndetta, as Abishag dry-nursed old King David.

Alicia weren't at all frosty. Then he folded his papers, replaced them in his wallet, wiped his glasses, shot his cuffs, hoped we'd find Hynds

ause, "if ever I had to rechristen t

use we were too tired. But on our second Sunday we p

ere. The old gentlemen, indeed, bowed to us with stately uncoverings of the head; the rest regarded us with the sort of impersonal and perfunctory i

for granted; but in this small town, where everybody kn

h!" murmured Alicia. "Why,

ided another way, with calculated Christian indifference. They weren't hostile, nor unfriendly: they were just deliberately indifferent. Nobody had the

diabolic uproar about Faith, Hope, and Charity. Mr. Haile was a mild-mannered little man of the saved-sheep type, with box-plaited teeth and a bleating voice. His wife

l to inform the trustees that the suit was dropped. I suppose Mrs. Haile was timid about broaching the delicate subject, for she ignored it with a nervous intensity that made me feel

Sunday after that until we die! Perhaps after a while some of them will bow to us, or maybe even say, 'How

her's house,"

l like a spanked child, in anybody'

t because yo

ke a coral button, and squinted her eyes: "I'm Irish, and you're English, and we're both Amer

eantime let's go home and see wh

, and do-as-they-please, independent gardens. Nobody ever seemed to be in a hurry, and at first we used to wonder how they ever got anything done, or kept pace with the moving world; yet they did. Only,

course one can't expect an old fortress of a brick house that's been neglected for more than three quarters of a century t

-a yellow dog of unknown ancestry, of shamefaced demeanor, a ropy tail, splay

ought to make friends with him, he tucked his tail between his legs, and shivered as if we made goose-flesh come out on his spine; and once when I took him by his rope collar he fell down and shrieked

ocess of buttering their paws. In South Carolina, when you want a cat to stay in your house, you butter its paws and let it lick the butter

Potty Black and Sir Thomas More Black, this last being

icia, stroking Mrs. Belinda Black's satiny head. "And may Sekhet the Cat of the Sun aid

ner; lunch being sandwiches and fried chicken taken out of a basket at church picnics and eaten out of one's hand, or lap, for cho

with undiluted joy: "O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord." And we had

es in de

h, La-

ne do wid de

h La-a-

t of ferns and mosses, was a great cluster of wild flowers, summer's last and autumn's first children. They had been gathered in no ordered garden, but

o wistful lighted with a sudd

uman thing to do! And to-day, too, just when we need a little b

or what happens in Hynds House, we believe in you. Don't