United States or United Kingdom ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then he dashed on down the ridge road toward Canaan, to find Crittenton Madeira. That Monday was hard on Madeira. It was his normal mental habit to come to a conclusion instantly, and cut a way for it across other people's ideas and notions with the impetus and onslaught of a cannon-ball. That Monday his mentality was below or above normal. He kept telling himself that he was mixed.
He was a big fellow, broad and lithe of shoulder and chest, and young and alert of face. "Gentlemen," he called from his horse's back, "I want to find Mr. Crittenton Madeira. Ah!" he laughed, a deep, rich note, as he saw the gold and black sign, "gentlemen, I have found Mr. Madeira!" He leaped from his horse and began to tether him to a staple, set in the pavement in front of the Grange.
Listen, Father, these were the words of the oath: 'Swear, I by my love for Salome Madeira, you by your love for Piney's young mother, that never, so help us God, shall one or the other of us carry word of this thing to anyone, least of all to Crittenton Madeira and his daughter, Salome!" "Ah-h-h!" The words of the oath seemed to bring Madeira his first brief respite in a long torture.
Crittenton Madeira's daughter wandered down the garden path, singing softly, after her father had left her, but there was in her song, as there had been in her laughter, a little tremble of unrest. The garden was a delicious place, whose fragrance beat up in waves of sweetness at every turn. All the flowers were in their luxuriant last bloom.
This letter, Placide, is to attest that for seven months Crittenton Madeira has been in unlawful possession of the Canaan Tigmores, defrauding my heir and holding land under my name after being advised of my death and of the means of verifying the advice.
He was not very familiar with conditions in Canaan, but it occurred to him suddenly that even in Canaan there might be social gradations, and that the tramp-boy, rare little chap though he seemed to be, was probably miles away from the daughter of the promoter, Mr. Crittenton Madeira. "I retract, Piney," he added gravely. "Aw! not as I keer whut you say abaout her, or whut anybody says."
When the grandnephew, Bruce Grierson, came on, the brick house was plastered with a mortgage that somehow passed eventually into the hands of the then alert young sapling land-agent, Crittenton Madeira. Crittenton took the house, and, by and by, Bruce Grierson, the second, took himself, with money borrowed from Madeira, out of Canaan, never to return.
Here and now, you shall swear this oath with me: I by my love for Sally Madeira, you by your love for Piney's young mother, that never, so help us God, shall one or the other of us carry word of these matters to anyone, least of all to Crittenton Madeira or his daughter Salome!" The old man's breath came gustily, his cheeks flamed, the hectic burned like fire in his shrivelled cheeks.
The name "Beth-Adriel" was soon dropped, and the place became one of the chain of Florence Crittenton homes. I have often sent there poor unfortunates that needed a refuge of that nature. As is my custom, I inquired of the Lord. I received so strong an impression regarding "an ounce of prevention," etc, that I said, "Yea, Lord, it is worth one hundred thousand pounds of cure."
The letter, Steering saw at once, was in the same gnarled handwriting as that letter which Crittenton Madeira had given him to read on the first day of his arrival in Canaan, and its contents made evident the same gnarled personality that had been made evident by that first letter.
Word Of The Day