A SIMPLE STORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2522, 16 July 1902, Page 90

A SIMPLE STORY.

By Arch M. iM'Xicol.

(For the Witness.) I can only tell this etorr simply — jt is a .simple story. Qn.ce' uiiott * im/h » loas. ti^e sg^

before the railways extended quite so far through the back country as they^ do now, and when the wool and the grain of the big up-country stations were carted down to the towns in big, lumbering waggons — • at this time, I say, there lived two men. The one was an old man and the other was a young one, and the name of the old man was Job Strong and of the young one. Hurry Dickson, and they were both waggoners. Upon the route of the waggons in those days was a half-way house, kept by old Silas Warren, where it was the custom 1 of these ivro waggoners to camp for the night. Old Silas Warren had one daughter, and her name was Hetty. She was just one of those kind of girls whom you would like tc meet, and, having met, would like to meet again. When the old waggoner, Job Strong, put up at her father's house she was in the habit of rendering him all those little services and attentions which it is the delight and the privilege of the young to tender to the old. But this old man, in this particular instance, was a foolish old man. Mistaking these little services for something higher and nobler, he fell in love with the fair Hetty, proposed, and was rejected.

Under such circumstances, I believe, some men have gone to the dogs. This oH man went on waggoning.

The other subject of this sketch was a' young man, altogether a fine stamp of a young man, and he married Hetty Warren.

It is necessary you should know all this, because it has to do with what follows, and what follows is the stoiy.

Some time after the events above narrated, it so happened that these two waggoners arrived in the town of Bungalo cm the same night.

Now. the town of Bungalo only boasts of one hok-1 ; in fact, it boasts of nothing else. That hotel comprises the 'whole of Bungalo. Upon the night on which these two waggoners arrived, it so happened there had been a sale in the district, and that one solitary hotel was full up. There was no room within its walls for them. Adjoining the hotel was an old stable with a loft, and in it the two men — the old man and the young man — lay down for the night.

People who live in such out-of-the-way parts as Bungalo are not privileged to see many of the stirring plays that are enacted in the panorama of the world. Tl»ey are like the crowd that stand outside the show. They can only hear and read of the brilliant deeds that are done in the arena of man, and wish that they had been there. But even to a people who live in such an out-of-the-way part of the world as Bungal© is sometimes vouchsafed a play of mor© than passing interest. On the night of I write the great demon entertainer Fire threw his lurid effects over that old hotel stable wherein those two men slept. He rattled up the beams ; he flew along the rafters ; he threw his satellites of bright, hissing, cutting forks of bitter flame, j>receded by curls of great, black, choking smoke ; and in the corner of that; loft he hemmed in tv.o men, helpless, expecting every moment to be entombed in a living hell.

At this stage the villagers took a hand in the game, and placed a ladder against a smoking, tottering beam. Dowp that ladder was the way of escape, and there was but time for one man to go ; and for that man was life and hope and the future. The man who stayed must surely die. The one would be taken and the other would be left — and the old man stayed !

That is all. Nothing very great about it, nothing very grand about it, nothing very marvellous about it. As I said, it is a simple story.

"WOLFE'S SCHNAPPS restores mental and physical vigour.