In the Sleepy Hollow Country (concluded) [pp. 83-97]

In the Sleepy Hollow Country.
regarding vaguely the bearded faces around
her. She heard as one in a dream, the
preliminary vindication of her uncle. She
heard how the two out-laws had been shot
down while resisting, all but capturing, the
officers sent in pursuit of them. Then it
was over, and again they left her alone with
him. During the three or four days preceding the funeral she ate, mechanically,
if food was placed before her, but she
tasted nothing. After it was all over, she
went back to the Sleepy Hollow farm-house
and prepared again to take up her life.
Once more she stood in the little parlor,
and the little squares of light and shadow,
fell caressingly upon her coppery brown
hair. Taking from the bosom of her riding
habit, which she still wore, the certificate
of her marriage, she handed it to Jim Newman:
"Take it," she said, "and show it to
Mr. Shelton. Tell him all."
Then she turned and went slowly up
stairs, shutting herself within the little room.
The strain upon nature gave way at lastand for many days she lay as one lost to the
world. There was another funeral, this
one from the farmhouse-but she did not
know it. She lay upon her white bed still
as a statue, whiter than the marble, and her
great eyes, moving, moving restlessly,
seemed asking of the distance things unutterable.
Slowly reason came back to her, and her
marvelous beauty was undimmed. But it
had about it now a softer sweetness, a tenderness, as a fair landscape acquires an
added charm from the cloud shadows drift O~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'
ing across it.
And the only comment of the Gov'nor
upon the whole thing was;
"Well, paw, he hadn't ought ter went
after them Greaser devils."
XVI.
In her private parlor at the hotel, Mrs.
Tom Carver sat sewing upon some trifle
of fancy work. Needless to say that. it
was an elegant trifle. The very fact of
her touch would add the elegance.
Certainly John Shelton had been right in
saying that Eduarda resembled this woman
— and yet they were not alike. Eduarda
Newman, warm with passionate life, had
typified the semi-tropical natural luxuriance
of her own land of fruit and flowers. Edna
Carver had the cold, clear beauty of winter
in the northland. Her skin, as smooth as
satin, was fair as a fall of snow upon a
Christmas morning. Her features were
regular and classic; her hair like spun gold;
brows and lashes dark, and eyes serenely blue
as a winter sky; and beneath the firmly
moulded chin there was a dainty white
throat like a column of marble.
She sat now at her window opening out
upon the piazza, sewing and singing softly
to herself, nor casting one glance upon the
fair town, the sea, or the islands, which lay
at her feet like a study in still sunshine.
There was a step upon the piazza, and a
tall, dark man, in spotless linen and Panama
hat, paused before the window and removed
a fragrant Havana from between his teeth.
"It was rather a novel idea of poor
Shelton's, Edna, leaving all his money to
that Spanish girl?
"Yes"- absently, "I do not quite understand it."
"It is plain enough. He had fallen in
love with her; and there was no one else."
"But she was married to the horse thief,
or some other dreadful thing, was not she?"
"Is it possible that you do not know?"
"How should I know, Tom? There
was no one to tell me."
"There were Mr. and Mrs. Newman."
"What, thatheart-broken looking woman
and even more heart-broken looking man!
Did you think me cruel enough to question
those people?"
"But that heart-broken looking man
told me all a out it and that without my
questioning him. I don't think that he
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