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The Bradstreet Mercantile Agency,

The Bradstreet Company, Props.

Executive Offices, 279, 281, 283 Broadway, N.Y

CHARLES F. CLARK, Pres,
Offices in the principal cities of the United

States, Canada, the European continent,
Australia, and in London, England.

Grand Rapids Office, Room 4, Widdieomb Bldg,

HENRY ROYCE, Supt.

 

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T. Stewart Wuire, Pres’t.
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COMMERCIAL CREDIT CO.
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Successor to Cooper Commercial Agency and

Union Credit Co.

Commercial reports and collections. Legal ad-
vice furnished and suits brought in local courts
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lars.

L. J. STEVENSON, C. A. CUMINGS,
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A TALE OF NANTUCKET.

One September morning a strange law-
yer paid his first visit to Nantucket, and
called at Melinda Robbins’s house. The
house was near the center of the town,
on a street running parallel with the bay,
or, at least, comparatively parallel, for
the system of Nantucket streets is some-
what eccentric and slightly difficult to
explain. Warm breaths of salt air per-
meated the absurdly narrow thorough-
fare where tufts of grass peeped fear-
lessly between the huge, uneven cobble-
stones.

The door was apple green, relieved by
a gleaming brass knocker of austere de-
sign; one reached it by ascending either
of two little flights of white-railed wood-
en steps which met in a brief, uncovered
porch. And tke few front windows, be-
neath a sheltering gabled roof, looked
forth from their cream-colored framing,
almost timidly, like children’s innocent
eyes.

Melinda Robbins lived alone. Few
strangers visited Nantucket after tran-
sient summer guests had taken their last
departures, and very few ‘“‘off-islanders”
ever called upon Melinda Robbins. The
limitations of Melinda’s social circle
arose from no unreasoning prejudice on
her side of the issue, for she hada
smaller amount of prejudices than
Nantucketers. She simply knew no
bond of congeniality between herself and
people of the mainland; she had no
tastes in common with them, and she felt
that they never could affiliate with her
any more than oil—to use an appropri-
ately aquatic phrase—can mix with
water. Melinda believed in the breadth
and depth of the vast sea, and in one old-
fashioned, isolated island—beyond this
loved horizon, physically or mentally,
she had never cared to roam; it had en-
circled her for thirty-one years and some-
how satisfied her soul.

But Attorney William Ritter resided in
the city of New York; such a distinction
radiated from every atom of his fault-
lessly-clothed person, and he hoped it
did. Next to the honor of disseminating
Blackstone, young Mr. Ritter cherished
his metropolitan environments. As he
entered Melinda Robbins’s parlor, he
trod the primitive floors benignly with a
generous air of palliative condescension.
He talked glibly and carried a pair of
rimless eye glasses on a clear-cut, slen-
der nose.

Melinda sat on the edge of one of her
mahogany chairs and gazed at him. The
steadfastness with which she regarded
the man gave her calm face a_ strong-
minded, frigid look, seeming to accentu-
ate the paleness of its regular features.
Her hair—a nut-colored brown—was
combed straight backward from her fore-
head without the fluffy evasions which
fashionable women use. She wore a
gray dress, simply made, and her eyes
matched the gown. Before the lawyer
went away she asked a great many ques-
tions briefly. in a clear voice.

Three days afterward, some news ran
through the quiet streets without the

most |

 

aid of the town-crier’s bell:
Robbins ’s had a legacy left her. A real
legacy—quite a largeone. Her brother’s
dead—J’irus, the one that ran away when
he wasaboy. An’ she never knew he
was dead!”

People stood in little groups in front
of the stores on Main street, talking it
over, and the more intimate friends
‘‘dropped in” on Melinda.

‘‘Well, Melinda,” one of them said,
smiling in spite of herself, ‘‘you must be
s’prised. I couldn’t believe my ears
when [ heard Timothy tellin’ Sallie
Wright! It’s terrible—ain’t it?’’

Melinda was ironing handkerchiefs in
her trim kitchen. ‘There was a paper
sent me,’’ she answered, ‘‘but 1 didn’t
receive it till to-day. I couldn’t have
gone to the funeral if I’d a-wanted to.”

‘‘My!’’ was the sympathetic response;
‘fan’ he was the last of the Robbinses,

‘*Melinda

too. Exceptin’ yourself,” she added
quickly.
“No,” replied Melinda, blushing,

‘‘J’irus has a son livin’; he’s about twen-
ty-three, now.”’

‘You don’t say!’ The speaker was
blonde and stout and always talked spas-
modically. ‘Just to think of it! an’ you
ain’t never once seen J’irus—have you?”

‘‘No,” said Melinda, her blush deepen-
ing; he never came back. There was al-
ways a little coolness between father an’
him. But they wrote to each other once
or twice. He was the oldest of the boys.
Mother thought it wore on father a good
deal—his goin’ the way he did.”

‘‘Well, 1 guess he must have pros-
pered if he left a legacy.’’
“Yes, he prospered,’’ said Melinda,

vaguely.

‘‘Well, ’'m glad J’irus didn’t do any-
thing mean in his will,’? her companion
went on. ‘‘We’ve always thought ’at he

must have been different from the Rob-
binses in more ways ’n one.”
The red on Melinda’s face had faded

slightly, but two round spots now flamed
anew. It was aninherent trait of the
Robbins family to defend one another in
public, whatever blame might be hidden
elsewhere, and ‘‘J’irus’’ was a sore topic.
Now that he was dead, Melinda’s loyalty
seemed to find fresh incentive. ‘‘Then
you were all mistaken,” she said stiffly;
‘““J’irus was a thorough Robbins; he al-
ways obeyed his own conscience.”’

After awhile, other women entered the
kitchen, and then they all adjourned to
the parlor and satin a row around the
room. Mrs. Piper, a wrinkled little lady
wearing gold spectacles, ventured at last
upon the subject nearest the callers’
hearts. ‘‘Adoniram Wright,” she began

atin’ things!
devoted to
some money;

He thinks you won’t be so
the island, now you’ve got
he says you’ll take on

the way your brother did. Sallie toid
him he ougkt to know you better; but
he’s kind of soured since his cousin left
last spring.”’

‘“‘We don’t set nothin’ by such ideas,
Melindy,’’? said a slow speaker; ‘‘we

big |
° oe . }
ideas an’ go cruisin’ off to the mainland |

GRAND RAPIDS, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1893.

|

| dull aching in her heart.
|
feebly, ‘‘is the worst hand to say insinu- |

 

know money can’t make you over in a
minute. You ain’t the flimsy kind, any-
how; you’re from good old Nantucket
stock.’’

Melinda Robbins listened gravely. The
women had no idea that their every sen-
tence hurt her like a blow. Since Will-
iam Ritter’s official call, the placid tenor
of her mind had been suddenly lashed
into tumult. It seemed as tossed and
perplexed as the ocean when a storm
sometimes hurled its waves high on Sias-
conset coast; but no friendly harbor
offered safe retreat.

Faint bits of color still brightened her
cheeks. It bewildered her to hear the
chief cause of her silent misery reck-
lessly tossed from these visitors’ smiling
lips. She had only dared to ponder it
stealthily with bated breath. She could
scarcely bear to hear them speak of the
mainland, for relentless reasens were
beckoning her to the unknown continent
—secret reasons that must never be re-
vealed. This had been hard to realize;
and now she saw that her love for her
island home was to be questioned, chal-
lenged, jested about— the very love
which held her from duty with a mysteri-
ous, vital strength.

‘I told Tim Bates,’? pursued Mrs. Pi-
per, ‘that ’d no idea how many thou-
sand dollars you’d got, but I didn’t be-
lieve ’smuch as a hundred thousand
would puff you up above Nantucket.
Nobody but Adoniram thinks ’twould.
So you needn’t mind, Melinda.’’

There was no response. The blonde
person, whose name was Ruth Tupper,
broke in abruptly upon an awkward
silence. ‘Well, how much did you get,
Melinda, or don’t you like to say?’

Melinda spoke with a great effort.
‘‘Why, yes; 1 don’t mind tellin’. ’Twas
a hundred thousand,” she answered

softly.

**G-g-gracious!”’

The information swept the still apart-
ment with the agitation attendant upon
a March squall. The women seemed to
be battling against it. ‘‘Melinda Rob-
bins, be you crazy?’ Mrs. Piper gasped
breathlessly. ‘“*What—what earth
will you do with it?”

Melinda tried to smile. Somehow the
sensation she had evoked made _ her bur-
den heavier—she felt the money to be a
burden.

‘lm glad you dropped in to-day,’’ she
said in the hallway as her friends were
preparing to depart, ‘‘for I’m thinkin’ of
goin’ away soon, an’ I mayn’t find time
to see every one before I leave.’? She
spoke the words niechanically, with a
The jumbled
responses broke on her ears confusedly,
devoid of meaning; and the blurred
glimpses of astonished faces looking
backward as she watched the four fig-
ures receding down the street, clung to
her memory long afterward.

She went upstairs presently, and took
aletter from an old East Indian tea
chest. It bore a last year’s date, and had
traveled from New York in Attorney

on

: Ritter’s coat pocket along with various