The Barrier Between.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 98, 22 May 1900, Page 4

The Barrier Between.

There Leonard Ford sits, as he has sat foi the last hour, his face buried in his hands, never once stirring or lifting his head. The full moon shines through the open window, casting long rays of tremuloui light across the room—outside making 1 silvery Paradise of sea and shore. A low breeze whispers softly in answer to the mysterious questioning of the waves ; tho great white clouds float serenely up towards the zenith; the midnight is so lull oi peace that it seems as if its influence ought actually to sooth human suffering; but Ford neither sees nor hears —Nature owns no spell which can lull his anguish into even temporary rest. The clock strikes. As its musical chime rings out Ford rises, as if the tones had been a signal, lifts his haggard face, and stares with his weary eyes across the moonlit sea.

So late ? Then, after all, he must delay till morning the awful revelation which all day long he has been telling himself shall be whispered in her horrified ears before he sleeps. And now the knowledge that his confession must be deferred until another morning dawns brings back the endless interrogatories and arguments with which he has so often striven to convince his socl that he need never speak, but let the dead past lie there in its shroud, dumb, powerless to stand between him and his every hope in life. It is not remorse for his crime—if crime It must be called—that has impelled him to the task against which he has struggled with all the force of his powerful will. He bas lived for five years with those memories ; of themselves they would never trouble his repose; it is the consciousness of what is due to the woman who is all the world to him, which wrings his heart-strings. He has never regretted killing the man; even had he taken the wretch's life intentionally he doubts whether he should not call it a righteous deed. Yet no hardened murderer ever paid a more fearful penalty for his sin than he must, since honour and duty, where his idol is concerned, force him to speak at last. He flings himself down into his chair again, and gradually as his tired mind drifts into the past, passively yielding itself a battle-ground to the old arguments and questions which fight there like sentienl creatures extraneous to his will, pictures from that long-silenced past start up, resembling figures in a phantasmagoria, and pass in slow procession before his inward sight. He sees again that mountain village in California, to which hi =. wandering steps had carried him, and sees himself detained there for a time by unavoidable business; sees the rude streets crowded with drunken miners, come thither to waste their earnings in a week's debauchery ; hears even the rough voices, the tumult; all the numberless revolting accessories are as vividly brought to his recollection as if he were standing there still;

On the last evening of his stay, he is forced to search for a friend whom it is imperative he shall meet before he departs. Somebody tells him that the mail has gone over to one of the numerous gaming-places which make a pandemonium of the town, and offers to show him the way. Ford mounts the narrow stairs, and finds himself in the smoke-tainted room, in the midst of the motley throng absorbed at farotable or poker-board, and at the further end perceives the youth whom he has ventured thither to seek.

As he stands looking at the pale, haggard face of the boy, who is playing cards with a trio of ruffians, he hears some man close tc him say to his neighbour : "That young chap won't have much left by the time he gets out; it's Black George Enmore and two of his pals that have got hold of him."

Ford, during these past days, has grown familiar with those names—even in that lawless, God-forsaken region, Black George and bis band are the synonyms for all that is worst and most abandoned.

Ford waits for a chance to get near enough the table to speak to young Arthur Carrol, who, half-mad with drink and despair, in his irresponsible frenzy, is staking recklessly money which belongs to the mercantile firm for whom he has come up to collect certain debts. He must atone for his drinking bout by the loss of honour if this business goes on, and, weak and tliin-natured as the youth is, he possesses qualities enough to make it worth an effort to save him ; besides, Ford has promised the widowed mother that he will look after her boy. The sight of the youthful face in its crazed excitement is so painful that Ford turns his eyes, and they rest on Black George—so called from his swarthy complexion and his evil deeds—and it requires only one glance to read the man's debased nature, so deadened by evil course that, if ever it held a gleam of decent feeling, such impulse has long since died out. Now the crowd lessens, so that Ford can reach the end of the room ; he goes behind the young lunatic, regardless of the danger he runs in striving to snatch the prey of those brigands from under their very eyes, and says, softly;

"Come now, Arthur; I have made arrangements so that we can start to-night —you must get ready at once." There are course ejaculations from two of the men, but Black George speaks never a word—sits looking at his cards. Ford repeats his request, adds to it ow whispers, trying to forceon the boy'ssoddened brain a realization of what he was doing. Carrol replies impatiently, then listens; at last, with a half-idiotic laugh, makes a movement o rise.

" Young man," says Black George, "if yon stir, I'll put daylight straight through you." And he means it—his revolver is out levelled at the youth's head. Ford springs at him ; they grabble; the pistol goes off in George's hand, and he falls back—dead, without even a groan, shot through the heart.

How it is done Ford hardly knows: but he gets out of the room by a back-door, which somebody opens, taking Carrol with him. There is a fierce fight in the town, but at least half of the crowd are opposed to Black George and his followers, so Ford and bis young friend are enabled to escape, and, within an hour, are galloping down the mountain road towards the nearest railway station

tor some reason, or lor ncne, the villagers have elected to consider Ford's Christian name his family appellation, so such mere notices of the brawl as creep into the newspapers term him only "Mr Leonard." As he leaves California within a mouth, his connection with the dismal affair seems at an end.

The next picture on which memory seizes and holds up to view, as Ford sits here in the silent midnight, is of a scene whose occurrences own a date three years later than the first.

He finds himself on a browded steamboat, and sees a lady, by whose appearance he is more attracted than he has been by any woman for a long time. She is young still—twenty-six, perhaps; handsome, well-dressed, everything about her, and the rest of her party, betokening that they belong to those favoured ones of the earth who resemble the lilies, inasmuch as "they toil not, neither do they spin." But not ao strougly do her beauty and grace noriccuble as iney ate, fascinate Ford as that strange expression in her eyes—always there, even when she talks and laughs gaily the look of a person who has lived through some terrible experience, which 110 time, no happiness, can obliterate.

in the middle of the night passengers arc aroused by the awful alarm of fire, prelude tooneo* the numerous horrible disasters to which'the ever-travelling nineteenth-century public has grown so accustomed that it seems to take them as a matter of course, liard.y asking 1: anybody is to blame. Scares of winded and maimed, of dead and dying, tell the tale in the next moraine's papers. They mention that the wealthy John Upton was among those killed, and that hi.-, beautiful niece, Gcraldine, would have shared his fate save for the superhuman cournge ol a certain Mr. Leonard Ford. 'I !nt '.S 311. The lady, safe in the charge o( her su'-vivin,!,' fiieitds, lies ill in a chamber of a hytel in a village near which they landed and. Ford goes his way to have his wounds a.id broken arm nursed and cured. It sptiw when tbi« adventure haptens, , '.jctol:e : , R., fi himself in v z - : , f - •' : • --n v! 'iv i j

He carries no luggage, but alight knapsack strapped to his saddle, chooses whatsoever route caprice indicates, stops the night at country inns, and enjoys the excursions more than he has done anything for a long while. For Leonard Ford is a very melancholy solitary man—partly by nature, more from the effect of great troubles pressing one after another, so heavily on his boyhood and youth, that now, when at thirtyfive he finds himself free and rich, he has few capabilities left for enjoying the mild pleasures and interests, which are all fate seems to hold for him in her hands. One morning he has set out in especially good spirits, and rides on through the glory of the autumn day—wondering, as he does not often allow himself to do, whether, even for him, the future may not carry some supreme good which shall, at last, be bestowed as a recompense for all that he has so unjustly suffered. As he rides, dreaming on, with slackened rein, just at a sharp turn in the road, his beast takes fright at the sudden approach of some barking dogs. He rears so quickly that, experienced horseman as he is, Fqrd is thrown from the saddle, and rolls helplessly down the ravine along which his course has lain {To be continued,)