X QQ4b 4 75he Bondmaa By HALL CAINE CHAPTER I Continued But for all that the little colony were poor and wretched the hearts of the shipwrecked company leapt up at sight of them and in the joyful gabble of un intelligible speech between them old Adam found that he could understand some of the words And when the isl anders saw that in some sort Adam understood them they singled him out from the rest of his company falling on his neck and kissing him after the way of their nation and concluding among themselves that he was one of their own people who had gone away in his youth and never been heard of after And Adam though he looked shy at their musty kisses was nothing loth to allow that they might be Manx men strayed and lost For Adam and his followers two things -came of this encounter and the one was to forward and the other to retard their journey The first was that the islanders sold them twelve ponies of the small breed that abound in that latitude and gave them a guide to lead them the nearest way to the capital The ponies cost them forty kroner or more than two pounds apiece and the guide was to stand to them In two kroner or two shillings a -day This took half of all they had In money and many were the heavy groans of the men at parting with it Sfs but Adam argued that their money was of no other value there than as a help out of their extremity and that all the gold in the banks if he had it would be less to him then than the lit tle beast he was bestriding The second of the two things that followed on that meeting with the isl anders was that just as they had start ed afresh on their way now twelve in all each man on his horse and a horse in the shafts of the cart that held the victuals a woman came running after them with a child in her arms and be sought them to take her with them That anyone could wish to share their outcast state was their first surprise but the womans terrified looks her tears and passionate pleadings seemed to say that to be homeless and house less on the face of that trackless land was not so awful a fate but that other miseries could conquer the fear of it So failing to learn more of her condi tion than that she was friendless and alone Adam ordered that with her child she should be lifted into the cart that was driven ahead of them But within an hour they were over taken by a man who came galloping after them and said the woman had stolen the child that it was his child and that he had come to carry it back with him At that Adam called on the woman to answer through the guide and she said that the man was indeed the childs father but that she was its mother that he was a farmer and had married her only that he might have a son to leave his farm to that having given him this child he had turned her out of doors and that in love and yearning for her little one from whom she had been so cruelly parted she had stolen into her old home plucked up the babe and run away with it Hearing this story which the woman told through her tears Adam answered the man that if the law of his country allowed a father to deal so with the mother of his child it was a base and unnatural law and merited the obedience of no man so he meant to protect the woman against both it and him and carry her along with their company With that answer the man turned tail but Adams victory over him was dearly bought at the cost of much vexation afterwards and sore delay on the hard journey And now it would be long to tell of the trials of that passage over those gaunt solitudes where there was no fingerpost or mark of other human travelers The men bore up bravely loving most to comfort the woman and do her any tender office or carry her child before them on their saddles And many a time at sight of the little one and at hearing its simple prattle in a tongue they did not understand the poor fellows would burst into tears as if remembering with a double pang that they were exiles from that country far away where other mothers held their own children to their breasts Two of them sickened of the cold and had to be left behind at a farm where the people were kind and gentle and promised to nurse them until their companions could return for them But the heaviest blow to all that company was the sickness and death of the child Tenderly the rude sailor men nursed V the little fellow one by one and when nothing availed to keep his sweet face among them they mourned his loss as the worst disaster that had yet befal len them The mother herself was dis traught and in the madness of her agony turned on Adam and reproached him saying he had brought her child into this wilderness to kill it Adam understood her misery too well to re buke her ingratitude and the same night that her babe was laid in his rest with a cross of willow wood to mark the place of it she disappeared from their company and where she went or what became of her no oner knew for she was seen by them no more But next morning they were over taken by a number of men riding hard and one of them was the womans hus band and another the High Sheriff of the Quarter These two called on Adam to deliver up the child and when he told them that it was dead and the mother gone the husband would have fallen upon him with his knife but for the Sheriff who keeping the peace said that as accessory after fact of theft Adam himself must go to prison Now at this the crew of the ship began to set up a woeful wail and to double their fists and measure the strength of nine sturdy British seamen against that of ten lanky Icelanders But Adam restrained them from vio lence and indeed there was need for Knone for the Sheriff was in no mood to pflfrv hie nrlKnnni awarr Mm All he did was to take out his papers antj fill them up with the name and de scription that Adam gave him and A ContlaaeiJ Story then hand them over to Adam himself saying they were the warrant for his imprisonment and that he was to go on his way until he came to the next dis trict where there was a house of de tention which the guide would find for him and there deliver up the docu ments to the Sheriff in charge With such instructions and never doubting but that they -would be fol lowed the good man and his people wheeled about and returned as they came And being so easily rid of them the sailors began to laugh at their simple ness and with many satisfied grunts to advise the speedy destruction of the silly warrant that was the sole witness against Adam But Adam himself said no that he was touched by the sim plicity of a people that could trust a man to take himself to prison and he would not wrong that confidence by any cheating So he ordered the guide to lead on where he had been directed They reached the prison towards nightfall and there old Adam bade a touching farewell of his people urging them not to wait for him but to push on to Reykjavik where alone they could find ships to take them home to Eng land And some of the good fellows wept at this parting though they all thought it foolish but one old salt named Chaise shed no tears and only looked crazier than ever and chuckled within himself from some dark cause And indeed there was small reason to weep because simple as the first Sheriffs conduct had been that of the secor3 Sheriff was yet simpler for whpfc Adam presented himself as a prisoner the Sheriff asked for his pa pers and then diving into his pocket to find them the good man found that tbey were gone lost dropped by the way or destroyed by accident and no search sufficed to recover them So failing of his warrant the Sheriff shook his head at Adams story and declined to imprison him and the prisoner had no choice but to go free Thus Adam returned to his company who heard with laughter and delight of the close of his adventure all save Chaise who looked sheepish and edged away when ever Adam glanced at him Thus end ed in merriment an incident that threatened many evil consequences and was attended by two luckless mis chances v The first of these two was that by going to the prison which lay three Danish miles out of the direct track to the capital Adam and his company had missed young Oscar and Zoegas men whom Michael Sunlocks had sent out from Reykjavik in search of them The second was that uieir guide had disappeared and left them within an hour of bringing them to the door of the Sheriff His name was Jonas he had been an idle and a selfish fellow he had demanded his wages day by day and seeing Aaam part from the rest he had concluded that with the purse bearer the purse of the company had gone But he alone had known the course and worthless as he had been to them in other ways the men began to rail at him when they found that he had abandoned them and left them to struggle on without help The sweep their thief the was trel the gomerstang they called him with wilder names besides But old Adam rebuked them and said Gcod friends I would persuade my self that urgent reasons alone can have induced this poor man to leave us Were we not ourselves constrained to forsake two of our number several days back though with the full design of returning to them to aid them when1 it should lie in our power Thus I cannot blame the Icelander without more knowledge of his intent and so let us push on still and trust in God to deliver us as He surely will And sure enough the next day after they came upon a man who undertook the place of the guide who had for saken them He was a priest and a very learned men but poor as the poor est farmer He spoke in Latin and in imjerfect Latin Adam made shift to answer him His clothes were all but worn to rags and he was shoeing his horse in the little garth before his door His house which stood alone save for the wooden church beside it looked on the outside like a line of grass cones hardly higher to their peaks than the head of a tall man and in the inside it was low dark noisome and noisy In one room to which Chaise and the seamen were taken three or four young children were playing the old woman was spin ning and a younger woman the priests wife was washing clothes This was the living room and sleeping room the birth room and death room of the whole family In another room to which Adam was led by the priest himself the floor was strewn with saddles nails hammers horsehoes whips and spades and the walls were covered with bookshelves whereon stood many precious old black letter volumes This was the workshop and study wherein the good priest spent his long dark days of winter And being once more fully equipped for the journey Adam ordered that they should lose no time in setting out afresh with the priest on his own pony in front of them Two days then passed without misadventure of any kind and in that time they had come to a village at which they should have forsaken the coast line and made for the interior in order that they might cross to Reykjavik by way of Thing vellir and so cut off the peninsula ending in the Smoky Point But a heavy fall of snow coming down sud denly they were compelled to seek shelter at a farm the only one for more than a hundred miles to east or west of them There they rested while the snowstorm lasted and it was the same weary downfall that kept Greeba to her house while Red Jason lay in his brain fever in the cell in the High Street and Michael Sunlocks was out on the sea in search of themselves And when the snow had ceased to fall and the frost that followed had hardened it and the country now white instead of black was again fit to travel upon it was found that the priest was unwilling to start Then I it appealed that downright drinking m A TTVf A PTPQ QTTTlTirYN had been hi3 sole recreation and his JLilJLJlljaLlXJL O DJBillillAll only bane that the most serious affairs of night and day had always submit ted to this great business that in the interval of waiting for the passing of the snow finding himself with a few kroner at command he had begun on his favorite occupation and that he now was too deeply immersed therein to be disturbed in less than a week To be continued SKUNK FARMS DO NOT Pfff Official Itoport au the Subject to tha Secretary of Agriculture A newspaper story of the profits made by raising skunks for their skins Is giving officials of the agricultural department no end of trouble It first bobbed up about a year ago It set forth that the agricultural depart ment had been studying skunk cul ture and had found that the beasts were more profitable than a gold mine As a result of the story the department has received many letters of inquiry T S Palmer assistant chief of the biological survey wants to correct this misapprehension In a report to Sec retary Wilson he says Misled by the statements about the rapid increase of skunks and the high prices paid their skins many persons seriously considered starting skunk farms For several years a list has been kept of such farms located in various parts of the country but so far as can be learn ed most of them have been abandoned Raising fur bearing animals for profit is not a new idea The industry how ever has apparently never advanced beyond the experimental stage ex cept in the case of the farms for rais ing the Arctic or blue fox established on certain islands of the coast of Axs ka Minks and skunks breed rapidly in captivity but the low price of skins make the profits rather small Last season the highest market price for prime black skunk skins from the northern states averaged about 145 each but white skins sold as low as 15 to 20 cents apiece Skins that have much white or which are obtained from the states usually bring less than 1 each a price that leaves little margin for profit after paying the expense of raising the animal in cap tivity New York Sun Kivers Under the Ocean A few montns ago H Benest an English geographer published an in teresting study of streams of fresh wa ter flowing beneath the surface of the sea Disasters to ocean telegraph cables first called attention to this sub ject On several occasions about 1895 a new and well made cable between Cape Verde and Brazil broke Sound ings wero made to discover whether these b eakings were due to the state of the sea bottom and it was found that the place n question was near the submarine mouth of a subterraneaa river the alluvial material transport ed by this fresh water stream encoun tered the cable and finally succeeded in breaking it The fact is that a river that flows into the lagoons of Yof on the coast of Senegal is finally lost in the sand It undoubtedly has taken its invisible course to the sea -and it is this river that has been discovered in the deep hollow of more than 1300 meters 4270 feet that is traversed by the Brazilian cable Also while the cable was being repaired at a point Iwenty four kilometers fifteen miles from the shore the repair shop was surrounded one day by orange skins calabashes and bits of cloth which could not have come from the mouth of the Senegal river 140 kilometers ninety miles distant Surgery by Telephone Surgery performed by directions giv en over the telephone is the latest in novation at the Hahnemann hospital A physician who is connected with its surgical staff was called up by tele phone the other day by a nurse at the childrens hospital in Germantown with which institution the physician is also connected and was told that his services were immediately required for a child who had dislocated its shoul der Bring the child right up to the telephone said the surgeon All right I have the child in my arms the nurse replied Now then said the physician place the childs elbow against its side and move its hand and forearm outward His direction were here interrupted by a sharp click that sounded through the telephone as the dislocated member snapped back into place There you are nicely done wasnt it said the surgeon to the nurse She replied that the opera tion had been most successful and the physician returned to his clinic- Philadelphia Record Trees Planted by Bluejays An old time Arizona wpodchoppei says the blue jays have planted thou sands of the trees now growing all over Arizona He says these birds have a habit of burying small seed in the ground with their beaks and that they frequent pinon trees and bury large numbers of the small pine nuts in the ground many of which sprout and grow He was walking through the pines with an eastern gentleman a short time ago when one of these birds flew from a tree to the ground stuck his bill in the earth and quickly flew away When told what had happened the eastern man was skeptical but the two went to the spot and with a knife blade dug out a sound pine nut from a depth of about an inch and a half Thus it will be seen that nature has plans of her own for forest perpetua tion Indianapolis News Puck Miss Beansby Perhaps you havent read all of Omar Khayyam Mrs Porkchop Perhaps not Has h written anything recently Some girls have expensive habits Velvet riding gowns for instance SEEKERS FOR WISDOM THE SUBJECT LAST SUNDAY Go to the Ant Thon Sluggard Consider Her Ways and Bo Wise Having No Gnide Overseer or Kulcr Sao Provid eth Her Meet Pro v 0 0 8 Copyright 1901 by Louis Klopsch N T Washington April 28 In this dis course Dr Talmage draws his Illustra tions from a realm seldom utilized for moral and religious purposes text Proverbs vi 6 8 Go to the ant thou sluggard consider her ways and be wise which having no guide overseer or ruler provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her food in the harvest The most of Solomons writings have perished They have gone out of exist ence as thoroughly as the 20 books of Pliny and most of the books of Aes chylus and Euripides and Varro and Quintilian Solomons Song and Ec clesiastes and Proverbs preserved by inspiration are a small part of his voluminous productions He was a great scientist One verse in the Bible suggests that he was a botanist a zoo logist an ornithologist an ichthyolo gist and knew all about reptilia I Kings iv 33 He spake of trees from the cedar tree that is In Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall he spake also of beasts and of fowl and of creeping things and of fishes Besides all these scientific works he composed 3000 proverbs and 1005 songs Although Solomon lived long before the microscope was constructed he was also an insectologist and watched and described the spider build its sus pension bridge of silk from tree to tree calling it the spiders web and he notices its skillful foothold in climbing the smooth wall of the throne room in Jerusalem saying The spi der taketh hold with her hands and Is in kings palaces But he is espe cially interested in the ant and recom mends its habits as worthy of study and imitation saying Go to the ant thou sluggard consider her ways and be wise which having no guide over seer or ruler provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her food in the harvest Not Altogether Commendable But Solomon would not commend all the habits of the ant for some of them are as bad as some of the habits of the human race Some of these small crea tures are desperadoes and murderers Now and then they marshal themselves into hosts and march in straight line and come upon an encampment of their own race and destroy its occupants ex cept the young whom they carry into captivity and if the army come back without any such captives they are not permitted to enter but are sent forth to make more successful conquest Sol omon gives no commendation to such sanguinary behavior among insects any more than he would have com mended sanguinary behavior among men These little creatures have some times wrought fearful damage and they have undermined a town in New Granada which in time may drop into the abyss they have dug for it But what are the habits which Solo mon would enjoin when he says Con sider her ways and be wise First of all providence forethought anticipa tion of coming necessities I am sorry to say these qualities are not charac teristic of all the ants These crea tures of God are divided into graniv orous and carnivorous The latter are not frugal but the former are frugal While the air is warm and moving about is not hindered by ice or snow bank they import their cargoes of food They bring in their caravan of provi sions they haul in their long train of wheat or corn or oats The farmers are not more busy in July and August in reaping their harvest than are the ants busy in July and August reaping their harvest They stack them away they pile them up They question when they have enough They aggregate a sufficient amount to last them until the next warm season When winter opens they are ready Blow ye wintry blasts Hang your icicles from the tree branches Imbed all the highways un der snowdrifts Enough for all the denizens of the hills Hunger shut out and plenty sits within God who feed eth every living thing has blessed the ant hill Wrecked by Extravagance There are women who at the first increase of their husbands resources wreck all on an extravagant wardrobe There are men who at the prospect of larger prosperity build houses they will never be able to pay for There are people with 4000 a year income who have not one dollar laid up for a rainy day It is a ghastly dishonesty practiced on the next generation Such men deserve bankruptcy and impover ishment In almost every mans life there comes a winter of cold misfor tune Prepare for it while you may Whose thermometer has not sometimes stood below zero What ship has never been caught in a storm What regiment at the front never got into a battle Have at least as much fore sight as the insectile world Examine the pantries of the ant hills in this April weather and you will find that last summers supply is not yet ex hausted Examine them next Julyand you will find them being replenished Go to the ant thou sluggard consider her ways and be wise which having no guide overseer or ruler provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her food in the harvest This is no argument for miserliness Avarice and penuriousness destroy a man about as soon as any of the other vices We have heard of those who entered their iron money vauH for business purposes and the door acci dentally shut and they were suffocated their corpse not discovered until the next day But every day and all up and down the streets of our cities there are men body mind and soul forever fast In their own money vaults Ac cumulation of bonds mortgages and government securities and town lots and big farms just for the pleasure of accumulation Is desplcablebut the put ting aside of a surplus for your self defense when your brain has halted or your right hand has forgotten its cunning or your old age needs a man servant or for the support of others when you can no more be a breadwin ner for your household that is right that is beautiful that is Christian that Is divinely approved That shows that you have taken Solomons ant hill for an object lesson Does Sat Decline Work Furthermore go to the ant and con sider that it does not decline work because it is insignificant The frag ment of seed it hauls into its habita tion may be so small that the unaided eye cannot see it but the insectile work goes on the carpenter ant at work above ground the ma son ant at work under ground Some of these creatures mix the leaves of the fir and the cat kins of the pine for the roof or wall of their tiny abode and others go out as hunters looking for food while others in domestic duties stay at home Twenty specks of the food they are moving toward their granary put upon a balance would hardly make the scales quiver All of it work on a small scale There is no use in our refusing a mission because it is insig nificant Anything that God in his providence puts before us to do is important The needle has its office as certainly as the telescope and the spade as a parliamentarian scroll You know what became of the man in the parable of the talents who buried the one talent instead of putting it to prac tical and accumulative use His apol ogy was of no avail There is no need of our wasting time and energy in longing for some other sphere There are plenty of people to do the big and resounding work of the church and the world No lack of brigadier generals or master builders or engineers for bridging Niagaras or tunneling Rocky mountains For every big enterprise of the world a dozen candidates What we want is private soldiers in the common ranks masons not ashamed to wield a trowel candi dates for ordinary work to be done in ordinary ways in ordinary places Right where we are there is something that God would have us do Let us do it though it may seem to be as unimportant as the rolling of a grain of corn into an ant hill Furthermore go to the ant and con sider its indefatigableness If by the accidental stroke of your foot or the removal of a timber the cities of the insectile world are destroyed instantly they go to rebuilding They do not sit around moping At it again in a sec ond Their fright immediately gives way to their industry And if our schemes of usefulness and our plans of work fail why sit down in discour agement As large ant hills as have ever been constructed will be con structed again Put your trust in God and do your duty and your best days are yet to come You have never heard such songs as you will yet hear nor have you ever lived in such grand abode as you will yet occupy and all the worldly treasures you have lost are nothing compared with the opu lence that you will yet own If you love and trust the Lord Paul looks you in the face and then waves his hand toward a heaven full of palaces and thrones saying All are yours So that what you fail to get in this present life you will get in the coming life Go to work right away and re build as well as you can knowing that what the trowels of earthly in dustry fail to rear the scepters of heavenly reward will more than make up Persistence is the lesson of every ant hill Waste not a moment in use less regrets or unhealthy repining Imparts Useful Lessons Furthermore go to the ant and con sider that if God honors an insect by making it our instructor in important lessons we ought not to abuse the lover orders of creation It has been found by scientists that insects trans fixed in the case of a museum have been alive and in torture for years How much the insect and the fowl and the brute may be rightly called to suf fer for the advancement of human knowledge and the betterment of the condition of the human race I do not now stop to discuss but he who use lessly harms any of Gods living crea tion insults the Creator Alas for the horrors of vivisection I have no con fidence in the morality of a man or woman who would harm a horse or dog or a cat or a pigeon Such men and women under affront if they dared would take the life of a human being You cannot make me believe that God looks down indifferently upon the galled neck of the ox or the cruel Jy curbed bit of the horse or the un sheltered cattle in the snowstorm or the cockpit or the bear baiting or the pigeon shooting or the laceration of fish that are not used Go to the ant thou miscreant and see how God honors it In the great college of the universe it has been appointed your professor All over the land and all over the world there are over driven horses that ought to be unharnessed caged birds that ought to be put on their wings in the free air of heave droves of cattle agonized of fairs the freight trains where to be watered an broiled alive tl out of the Jk apostles first ci nam ha wrought for the relief of the bruto cre ation and his name wa3 Henry Bergb In my text the ant Is not Impaled Is not dead but alive and In the witrm fields providing her meat in tho sum mer and gathering her food in tto har vest Furthermore go to the ant and learn the lesson of God appointed or der The being who taught the insect how to build was geometer as well as architect The paths inside that lit tle home radiate from the door with as complete arrangement as ever tho boulevards of a city radiated Irom a triumphal arch or a flowered circle And when they march they keop per fect order moving in straight lines1 turning out for nothing If a timber He In the way they climb over it If there be a house or barn in the way they march through It Order in ar chitectural structure order in gov ernment order of movement order of expedition So let us all observe this God appointed rule and take satis faction In the fact that things are not at loose ends in this world If there is a divine regulation in a colony or republic of insects is there not a divine regulation in the lives of Im mortal men and women If God cares for the least of his creatures and shows them how to provide their meat in the summer and gather their food in tho harvest will he not be Interested in matters of human livelihood and in the guidance of human affairs I preach the doctrine of a particular providence Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing and yet not one of them is forgotten before God Are ye not of more value than many spar rows Let there be order In our in dividual lives order in the family or der in the church order in the state Gods Care of Small Things After what Linnaeus and Pierre Huber have told us concerning these living mites of the nutural world are we not ready to believe that the God who turns the wheel of the solar sys tem and the vaster wheel of the universe regulates the beehive and the ant hill and that all the affairs of our mortal lives are under divine man agement When some one asked a hermit on the top of a mountain in Italy if he did not feel it dangerous to live so many miles from human habitation he replied No Provi dence is my very next door neighbor He who Taecame Sir Thomas Gres ham and built the Royal Exchange in London when an Infant was abandoned by his mother in the fields Did it just happen so that the chirping of a grasshopper brought a boy to the spot where the babe lay and his life was saved Not so thought Sir Thomas Gresham who having arrived at great wealth and power chose a grasshop per for his crest and had the figure of a grasshopper im pressed on the wall of the Royal Exchange and had at the top a weather vane in the figure of a grasshopper The Waldensian Christians in the sev enteenth century were expelled from the valleys and on their way 800 of them were starving to death Did it just happen so that one night the deep snow suddenly thawed and showed a large amount of wheat which had been covered by the untimely snow and was suddenly uncovered so that the hun ger was satisfied and the 800 lives were saved Did it just happen so Near Port Royal Jamaica is a tomb with this inscription Here lieth the body of Louis Caldy Esq a native of Mont pellier in France which country he left on account of the revocations He was swallowed up by the earthquake which occurred at this place in 1692 but by the great providence of God was by a second shock flung into the sea where he continued swimming till rescued by a boat and lived forty years afterward Was the release of that man from the jaws of the earthquake a just happen so When during the plague in London at the risk of his life and under the protest of his friends Rev Thomas Vincent spent his time preaching the gospel to the suf ferers and 68596 people perished seven fatalities in the house where he lived did it just happen so that he came through unhurt All Under Gods Care We live in times when there are so many clashings There seems almost universal unrest Large fortunes swdl low up small fortunes Civilized na tions trying to gobble up barbaric na tions Upheaval of creeds and people who once believed everything now be lieving nothing The old book that Moses began and St John ended bom barded from scientific observatories and college classrooms Amid all this disturbance and uncertainty that which many good people need is not a stimulus but a sedative and in my text I find it divine observation and guid ance of minutest affairs And nothing Is to God large or small planet or ant hill the God who easily made the worlds employing his infinity in the wondrous construction of a spiders foot Before we leave this subject let thank God for those who were willl to endure the fatigues and self sz fices necessary to make revelat the natural world so re enforcj Scriptures If the microscor speak what a story it coi hardship and poverty and perseverance on the employed it for ii It would tell of Strauss of the of those minute gered vh iMm KJJS n is xi jn gf H -- I-