For Woman's Love

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

A BRILLIANT MATCH.

"I remember Regulas Rothsay—or Rule, as we used to call him—when he was a little bit of a fellow hardly up to my knee, running about bare-footed and doing odd jobs round the foundry. Ah! and now he is elected governor of this State by the biggest majority ever heard of, and engaged to be married to the finest young lady in the country, with the full consent of all her proud relations. To be married to-day and to be inaugurated to-morrow, and he only thirty-two years old this blessed seventh of June!"

The speaker, a hale man of sixty years, with a bald head, a sharp face, a ruddy complexion, and a figure as twisted as a yew tree, and about as tough, was Silas Marwig, one of the foremen of the foundry.

"Well, I don't believe Regulas Rothsay would ever have risen to his present position if it had not been for his love of Corona Haught. No more do I believe that Old Rockharrt would ever have allowed his beautiful granddaughter to be engaged to Rothsay if the young man had not been elected governor," observed a stout, florid-faced matron of fifty-five. "How hard he worked for her! And how long she waited for him! Why, I remember them both so well! They were the very best of friends from their childhood—the wealthy little lady and the poor orphan boy."

"That is very true, Mrs. Bounce," said a young man, who was a newcomer in the neighborhood and one of the bookkeepers of the great firm. "But how did that orphan get his education?"

"By hook and by crook, as the saying is, Mr. Wall. I think the little lady taught him to read and write, and she loaned him books. He left here when he was about thirteen years old. He went to the city, and got into the printing office of The National Watch. And he learned the trade. And, oh, you know a bright, earnest boy like that was bound to get on. He worked hard, and he studied hard. After awhile he began to write short, telling paragraphs for the Watch, and these at length were noticed and copied, and he became assistant editor of the paper. By the time he was twenty-five years old he had bought the paper out."

"And, of course, he made it a power in politics. I see the rest. He was elected State representative; then State senator."

"Yes, indeed. You've hit it. And now he is going to marry his first love to-day, and to take his seat as governor to-morrow," continued the matron, with a little chuckle.

"Regulas Rothsay will never take his seat as governor," spoke a solemn voice from the thicket on the right of the road along which the party were walking to the scene of the grand wedding. All turned to see a strange form step out from the shelter of the trees—a tall, gaunt, swarthy woman, stern of feature and harsh of tone; her head covered with wild, straggling black hair; her body clothed in a long, clinging garment of dark red serge.

"Old Scythia," muttered the matron, shuddering and shrinking closer to the side of the bookkeeper, for the strange creature was reported and believed by the ignorant and superstitious of the neighborhood to be powerful and malignant.

"Regulas Rothsay will never take his seat as governor of this State!"

As the beldame repeated and emphasized these words, she raised her hand with a prophetic gesture and advanced upon the group of pedestrians.

"Now, then, you old crow! What are you up to with your croaking?" demanded Mr. Marwig. "Look here, Mistress Beelzebub! Do you know that you are a very lucky woman to live in a land where not only may a barefooted boy rise to the highest honors by talent and perseverance, but where a malignant old witch may torture and terrify her neighbors without fear of the ducking stool or the stake?" he demanded.

The beldame looked at him scornfully, and disdained to reply.

"Wait!" said a stout, dark, middle-aged, black-whiskered man, Timothy Ryland by name, and one of the managers of the "works" by state. "Wait, I want to question this miserable lunatic. She may have got wind of something. Tell me, old mother, why will not the governor-elect take his seat to-morrow?"

"Because Fate forbids it," solemnly replied the crone.

"Will the governor be—murdered?"

"No; Regulas Rothsay has not an enemy in the world!"

"Will he be killed on the railroad, or kidnapped?"

"No!"

"Will he be taken suddenly ill?"

"No!"

"What then in the fiend's name is to prevent his taking his seat to-morrow?" impatiently demanded the manager....