At Pinneys Ranch | Page 4

cared for. Johnny is now six, and ought to go to school, but I
cannot dress him decently enough to send him. Mary has outgrown all
her clothes, and I cannot get her more. Her feet are too tender to go
bare, and I cannot buy her shoes. I get less and less sewing since the
new dressmaker came to the village, and soon shall have none. We live,
oh so plainly! For myself I should not care, but the children are
growing and need better food. They are John's children, and for their
sake I have brought myself to do what I never could have done but for
them. I have promised to marry Mr. Whitcomb. I have not deceived

him as to why alone I marry him. He has promised to care for the
children as his own, and to send Johnny to college, for I know his
father would have wanted him to go. It will be a very quiet wedding, of
course. Mr. Whitcomb has had some cards printed to send to a few
friends, and I inclose one to you. I cannot say that I wish you could be
present, for it will be anything but a joyful day to me. But when I meet
John in heaven, he will hold me to account for the children he left me,
and this is the only way by which I can provide for them. So long as it
is well with them, I ought not to care for myself.
Your sister,
Maky Lansing.
The card announced that the wedding would take place at the home of
the bride, at six o'clock on the afternoon of the 27th of June.
It was June 27 that day, and it was nearly five o'clock. "The Lord help
you!" ejaculated Pinney, as he saw, by the ashen hue which overspread
Lansing's face, that the full realization of his situation had come home
to him. "We meant to keep it from you till to-morrow. It might be a
little easier not to know it till it was over than now, when it is going on,
and you not able to lift a finger to stop it."
"Oh, John," cried Mrs. Pinney once more; "remember, she does n't
know!" and, sobbing hysterically, she fled from the room, unable to
endure the sight of Lansing's face.
He had fallen into a chair, and was motionless, save for the slow and
labored breathing which shook his body. As he sat there in Pinney's
ranch this pleasant afternoon, the wife whom he worshiped never so
passionately as now, at their home one thousand miles away, was
holding another man by the hand, and promising to be his wife.
It was five minutes to five by the clock on the wall before him. It
therefore wanted but five minutes of six, the hour of the wedding, at
home, the difference in time being just an hour. In the years of his exile,
by way of enhancing the vividness of his dreams of home, he had

calculated exactly the difference in time from various points in
Colorado, so that he could say to himself, "Now Mary is putting the
babies to bed;" "Now it is her own bedtime;" "Now she is waking up;"
or "Now the church-bells are ringing, and she is walking to church." He
was accustomed to carry these two standards of time always in his head,
reading one by the other, and it was this habit, bred of doting fondness,
which now would compel him to follow, as if he were a spectator,
minute by minute, each step of the scene being enacted so far away.
People were prompt at weddings. No doubt already the few guests were
arriving, stared at by the neighbors from their windows. The
complacent bridegroom was by this time on his way to the home of the
bride, or perhaps knocking at the door. Lansing knew him well, an
elderly, well-to-do furniture-maker, who had been used to express a
fatherly admiration for Mary. The bride was upstairs in her chamber,
putting the finishing touches to her toilet; or, at this very moment, it
might be, was descending the stairs to take the bridegroom's arm and
go in to be married.
Lansing gasped. The mountain wind was blowing through the room,
but he was suffocating.
Pinney's voice, seeming to come from very far away, was in his ears.
"Rouse yourself, for God's sake! Don't give it all up that way. I believe
there's a chance yet. Remember the mind-reading you used to do with
her. You could put almost anything into her mind by just willing it
there. That's what I mean. Will her to stop what she is doing now.
Perhaps you may save her yet. There's a chance you may