A SILENT TRAGEDY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2490, 4 December 1901, Page 78

A SILENT TRAGEDY.

By Jessica.

He wes to 11 and handsome ; his face, tanned with the fierce rays of a Victorian sun, looked honest and trustful ; his black hair fell in short ringlets over his forehead ; lii= brown eyes had a ineiry twinkle in them, while his dark moustache hid a Uughing mouth ; and in his khaki uniform, which became him well, he looked what he was- — a jolly, careless soldier.

She — well, there wasn't very much of her. Slight and girlish, with fair golden hair and large blue eyes. She wos only eighteen, snd being the only ch-ld of a rich, doting father (her mother had died when she was an infant), she had seen comparatively little of the sorrows of life. When on a visit to an old schoolmate, a daughter 01 a station owner, she had met. Jack Wcston, who, taken by the pretty little Melbourne girl, wooed her and won her heart. Lily Melville had gone bock to Melbourne wondrously happy ; but the girl was now a woman, with a woman's hopes and joys.

Then — oh, cruel war ! — dime the cill for nitn ior Sotilh Afr'ca. oec! Jack Westcn, iired with zeal for iil^ 'otuiiiy, was among Hie fir-c volunteer,- fio:n Victoria. He was accepted and — he must p?rt from hojne and sweetheart to-morrow. To-morrow? Ah, yes, how well poor Lily knov\^ thot. But Jack has loM her to be brave, and brave she will uc fo. hi* r-'ke.

W?.« f-hc bi;ivo? OJ eoiii-o '-lie was She said good-bye to him with a smile and jc?t, telling him not to fall in love with r. Boer maiden, 'but 10 remember his '"little Australian Lily " And no one cuiild have guessed that Ihe heait of the girl with the calm, pale f;ce w?s bursting with grief.

Two month* after Lily ytcJs I'ft, n penniless orplnn, to the care of an uncle in Xew South Wales. There she travelled to find a honip. Home? Ye-, where her aunt, a hard, selfi-h womjn, made a peifect slave oi her for herself and her children ; where her uncle was not master in his own house, for his wire, with her tyrannical temper, reigned supreme. (For weeks Lily, with a spirit that was almost indomitable, struggled on. the only joy in her life being the letters from her 'Soldier boy." Far across the ocean, in the land over -which hung the shadow* of war. J«ck Weslon fought bravely for Queen and country. But who can say that he fonffht a harder battle than did Lily Melville far back in New South Wales? 'Twas evening when Jack Weston, with dying lips, breathed a last prayer for the '"girl he left behind him.' and a lonely crave on the veldt in South Afiica marks his last re-ting place. Ti« evening again. Twilight shadows are creeping over the earth, and Lily Melville (her uncle now dend), turned by a cruel, relentless woman from her only home on earth, i^ walking dejectedly in the dh ection of the tow n of H . Twilight gives place to datkne«s, and a fearful storm arise*. The night is dark as pitch, but Lily, storm tos»ed and drenched to the skin, struggles on. Now she can discern the lights of the town twinkling through the darkness. " Oh, I shall soon get shelter,' she murmurs. In utter ignorance of the road, she makes straight for the lights.

Ah. Lily, those lights are misguiding. Follow them, and you meet with an awful death. Even now your feet are on the borders of an awful precipice. Is there no one near to save? The wild howls of the wind are the only answer. One step more, one little startled cry, and then down, down, her dress catching on scrub and thorns bur only slopping half a second, and then dov. n again. Oh, God, will it never end? Ah, a faint thud. The bottom is reached, and Lily, crushed, torn, and bleeding, is lying seven hundred feet below. But not Lily, for the soul has fled fiom its frail tenement. The earthly lil\- Is transplanted to the garden above, where .storms never come and where sorrow i<= unknown.

Three weeks after the body was found. The usual inquest was held, inquiries were made, people wondered and conjectured, but no one came to elucidate the mystery. Who can say but that in the land "where they neither marry nor are given in marriage tho«e two souls enjoy the sweet communion which on earth was denied them !