THE MILL WHEEL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2078, 21 December 1893, Page 4

THE MILL WHEEL.

(Specially written for the Christmas Nwnler

of 1593.)

By PRIMUS.

You want to know why I love that tune the barrel organ tune 1 Well, it is a sad story, but it was the last soDg I ever heard the man whose photograph is on the shell sing.

I had been playing first one jig on the piano, then another, and he in turn had sung "Ruby," and then "The two Obadiahs," and then at random I began " The mill wheel," and, heavens! he sang it with a power and pathos that brought tears to my eyes, for his thoughts had wandered back a long way I knew to old days, when he and another used to listen to it sung by bands of rollicking students on the banks of the Rhine.

Who was the other, and why did tears well up in my eyes as I thought of them 1 How many more questions? Oh, well, if you will have a sad story on Christmas Eve, ifc is your own look out, not mine.

Arthur Gordon, more popularly known as " Dart," was one of those young fellows born to comfort and luxury, and yet \gas doomed to a sad destiny. He had inherited a pretty old place in the country, £3000 a year, and was engaged to as pretty a girl as anyone could wish. Handsome, was he (a woman's question)? Handsome? rather I — curly grey hair by the time he was 30, and a moußtache black as a coal to the day he died, and a laugh that everyone had to join in, it was so infectious. He and his bride married, and off they went for their honeymoon to the silver Ehine, and there they discovered that they were not suited to each other, and from not being suited they started to find marriage a mistake, and when they came home again it was easy for their friends to see something was wrong. A year after— but why spin the story out?— she left him, and not alone. Then came the hateful divorce scenes, which we will skip, and now comes my story.

Dart went off to Canada to try to forget it all, and there a couple of years Jater he met as sweet a girl as you could wish to see in a long day, and they became engaged and were married, and he brought her back to the old country. There could be no doubt about her loving him. Why, she worshipped him, and they had one bonny boy. One night — it was summer time, and I was staying with them in their pretty home by the river, and it was the night I heard him sing that song I told you of. As he ended ha turned and said, " It is years since I sang that song, and I shall wait years till I sing it again. It is too sad." He paused, and then, turning round in his usual jolly way, he asked me to go for a smoke by the river, and we wandered off. " Don't wait for me, Leslie," he said to his pretty young wife; "we may be late." It was a glorious night, bright moonshine, and the river looked like a sheet of glass. As we wandered on in the distance I saw a woman walking, and as we drew near I could see she was pretty, and rofined, but poverty-stricken. She wandered up and down restlessly, but we passed her a« perhaps a distance of a hundred yards or so Suddenly Dart stopped and said, " Did you not hear a cry ? " " Oh, an owl, perhaps," I said. " But it was a woman's voice, and, by Jove I where's the woman we passed just now?" He turned and ran back. 1 followed, and in less time than I can tell you I saw him pull off his coat and spring into tha river. A ripple on the river and a woman's pale face came up in the moonlight, and a piteous voice cried, " Dart ! oh, Dart 1 " "Coming, Jenny," was the answer, and I saw Dart swimming hard; but what happened we never knew. Whether they sank, sucked down by the current, or his strength failed, I could not tell, but they sank, anc! when afterwards the river was dragged they were brought to the bank in tight erabraco — Dart and the wife who had left him.

Leslie never knew. We kept It from hor, and she thought it was a stranger her noblu husband had attempted to save. There, that's why I love and play that old tune, but let's be a bit more cheerful ou Christmas Eve. Who says euchre 1