Both Sides 
of 
The Shield 
oe 
By Major 
ARCHIBALD W. BUTT, 
One of the Heroes of the 
Titanic and President 
Taft’s Military Aid. 
Copyright, 1905, by J. B. Lippincott 
company. All rights reserved. 
SYNOPSIS 
Palmer, a Boston newspaper man, is 
sent to Georgia to report social and indus- 
trial conditions in a series of letters to his 
paper. Colgniel Turpin, a southerner, 
thinks Palmer is a lawyer and has come 
e foreclose the Turpin plantation’s mort- 
gage. 
Palmer undeceives him, and the colonel, 
thinking that Palme is a kinsman, in- 
vites him to be his guest at the Pines. 
Palmer meets Ellen and Bud Turpin and 
is hospitably received. 
He becomes interested in Ellen and 
learns that the Turpin home is in grave 
peril through lack of funds. He wants to 
confess that he is not really a kinsman, 
but fails to do so. 
Squire Hawkins, an elderly man, is 
eourting Ellen. A rirty is planned in 
honor of Palmer, wh writes his {mpres- 
sions of the place far >iq naner. 
awsren wears an old brocade gown at the 
party, and Palmer falls in love with her. 
Ellen and her friends take him to the 
wishing stone. 
“You are my queen tonight,” Palmer 
tells her, but she will not permit him to 
avow his love. He fears she intends mar- 
rying the squire to save the old home. 
Ellen thinks Palmer has ridiculed her 
and her family in one of his newspaper 
articles and commands him to leave her 
and never return. 
Palmer secretly acquires the Turpin 
mortgage to protect the place for Ellen, 
then volunteers for service in the war 
against Spain. 
(CONTINUED. ] 
The colonel crossed the room and 
passed out into the hall: I got up and 
stood leaning on the back of the chair 
In which I had been sitting. 
“Miss Ellen,” I said, “I have some- 
thing important to say to you. It fs 
not what you think,’ for a pained ex- 
pression came into her face. “It is a 
confession I have to make.” 
“Yes, Mr. Palmer,’”? she said and 
turned from the window to face me. 
The sun had come from behind a bank 
of clouds and crimsoned the checkered 
panes of glass, and her hair, catching 
the rays that filtered through them, 
framed her in a halo and to me gave 
her the appearance of a saint. Her face 
was pale, and her long eyelashes were 
fringed * tears. 
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NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
“Miss Ellen,” I said softly, “it was. I 
who wrote those letters.” 
For a moment she did not speak, and 
when she did her voice seemed passion- 
less. 
“Then it was you, after all,” was 
what she said. “I had refused to en- 
tertain the thought even until you 
yourself confessed it. Even now it 
seems too horrible to believe, And I 
stopped speaking to my best friend 
merely because she half playfully sug- 
gested that it might be you.” She said 
this more to herself than to me. 
“Why did you not tell this to me be- 
fore,” I said, ‘‘and I would have ex- 
plained?” 
“Why did I not tell you?’ she asked, 
her voice breaking with anguish. ‘“Be- 
rause I thought you were a gentleman 
and you were our guest. It would have 
been an insult to have mentioned it. 
Buch a suggestion would have been a 
~ teflection on him you ridiculed and on 
fe, whom you would have made be- 
fieve you loved had you dared to speak 
the lie upon your lips.” 
“Love you!” I cried. “I would die for 
you!”’ 
‘It is the only way you could ever 
prove it now,” she said. “Oh,” she con- 
tinued, “if you had only leveled your 
ridicule at me alone! But father, poor 
old father! I am glad he will not see 
that last letter. He would hardly think 
that one funny.” 
She looked at me, and her eyes sud- 
flenly seemed to blaze with scorn and 
contempt, 
“Yes, I see it all now, and the won- 
fler is I did not see it before. It was 
he whom you described as a broken 
down aristocrat who descanted on 
politics and wrote pieces to the paper 
telling the president how to run the 
government, It was mother who dress- 
ed in wornout velvet gowns and sat in 
state at the dinner her daughter had 
cooked, and it was I who cooked the 
dinners and played sonatas and noc- 
turnes for the amusement of our 
guests. God, why did I not see you 
as you were? Yes, and these are the 
hands,” she cried in anguish and scorn, 
holding them toward me that I might 
See them, “that have cooked your 
meals for the past four weeks, and 
these are the same hands that played 
for you while you smoked your pipe 
and heard father descant on politics! 
How poor and miserable we must have 
seemed to you! All that I could have 
forgiven, but you dared to soil my skin 
with your kisses. They will burn 
deep here,” she said, pointing to her 
fingers, “long after your ingratitude 
has been forgotten.” 
“BHllen, for God’s sake have pity!’ I 
cried. “I have laughed at your pover- 
ty as if it were my own. I am rich—I 
never told this to you before—and I 
felt that the only use of my wealth in 
the future would be to relieve the bur- 
dens of those you love. This night— 
nay, this very afternoon—I was going 
“Don’t touch me!” 
to ask you to be my wife, from which 
moment your father, mother and broth- 
er would have been mine also. It was 
this very poverty and the fortitude 
with which you bore it that have made 
me love you. After you spoke this aft- 
ernoon I could not tell you of my love 
until I had confessed first that I was 
the author of the letters which wound- 
ed you so deeply.” 
“T am glad you spared me that last 
humiliation. I can never forgive my- 
self for being happy in your company 
or for spurning the hand stretched out 
to lift us from this degradation.” 
“Squire Hawkins,” I said in bitter- 
ness. 
“Yes, Squire Hawkins, whom you 
would have insulted as you have us. 
And to think that just because I had 
listened to him I believed myself un- 
worthy of your love! You must ex- 
cuse me now,” she added in cutting 
tones, ‘for I must go to prepare your 
dinner. I suppose there will be one 
less to provide for tomorrow!” 
She started to leave the room, but I 
stood in front of her. 
“No, I will not go. You do not un- 
derstand. It was with love welling in 
my heart that I wrote that last letter. 
I had been ordered home, and I wrote 
that letter that I might. stay another 
fortnight. After you had promised to 
be my wife I would have told you all, 
and together we would have read it, 
and in the richness of the future we 
LL 
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