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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1900)
H 3Buneb Morroc. 'N THAT part of the island-cur tained town of Brunswick, on the coast of Georgia, which is built out towards what is called the Back Landing—the very spot where Sidney Lanier stood to breathe in the inspira tion of “The Marshes of Glynn’’— there has long stood an odd, old-fash ioned house. It occupies one-half of a square with its yards and outbuild ings. On the other half is a large grove of live oaks. In this lonely house ftved, almost alone, a lady singularly fated to re ceive thrusts from fortune, as you will soon admit after hearing my tale. Though she had been twice married, her home had always been the Dutart mansion. She was still young and beautiful, a soft, fair girl, with a quick smile and dimpling cheek. Her first marriage, which had taken place three years be fore, had been of short duration. Its only fruit had been a legacy of shame. She was a mere girl when she gave her hand to Stephen Gastreet. The match at the time was thought suita ble, though the young man was known to be lavish in expenditure far beyond what his slender inheritance would authorize. But he was a promising lawyer, a brilliant member of society, shining from time to time with mete oric splendor in the neighboring cities of Savannah and Charleston, lucky on the race course and at card parties, and believed to be the undoubted heir of his aunt. She was an elderly widow, who owned in her own right a large and valuable rice plantation on the Al- tamaha. One dark and stormy night the brief happiness of the young bride was quenched in blood mire, and infamy. Her father, who was then living, but had been abroad since the first month of her wedded life, had landed a few hours before day, when the storm was spent, at his own place on the Alta- maha, thirteen miles away, and had ridden furiously through the night to rouse the miserable wife at day-dawn, and break to her the shocking news that her husband was a forger. He had expected to drive the guilty man from the house and take his’ un happy daughter under his own protec tion, hoping to separate them before the flight of the forger should by pos sibility involve the wife in his desti nies. The father’s great dread was that his darling Annie might go with the criminal in his exile. For he knew that the marriage was still a happy one, and he naturally feared that she would cling to her husband unless un deceived in time as to the character of the deed which made him an out law. But, as he burst through the little garden gate, the sight that met his eye at the door of the trellised arbor on his right, brought him to a sudden pause. There, in the mud, his gar ments sodden with rain and grimy sand, lay the form of the wretch who had forfeited his honor. The old man rushed to the spot, and, with loathing, turned the body over. The face had been blown away by one or more pistol shots so as to be wholly unrecognizable. The revolver lay close by; and Judge Dutart, pick ing it up, read the name of Stephen Gastreet inscribed on the plate. He felt no doubt about the matter; his unworthy son-in-law, unable to face
