Adventure Magazine Cover — page 124: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

114 worn in her childhood, and a long gun lay across his knees. His air was somber and wistful and yet with a kind of noble con- tent in it. He had Abe’s puckered-up lips and Abe’s steady sad eyes. Into her memory came a verse of the Scriptures. which had always fascinated her. “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and con- fessed that they were strangers and pilgrims upon the earth.” She saw it all in a flash of enlightenment. These seekers throughout the ages had been looking for something and had not found it. But Abe, her son, was to find it. That was _ why she had been sent those dreams. Once again she looked through the door into bright sunshine. It was a place that she knew beside the Ohio—she remembered the tall poplar-clump. She did not see the Jacksons’ farm which stood south of the trees, but there was the Indian graveyard, which as a little girl she had been afraid to pass. Now it seemed to be fresh-made, for painted vermilion wands stood about the mounds. On one of them a gold trinket, tied by a loop of hide, rattled in the wind. It was her ring. The seeker lay buried there with the talisman above him. AISHE was awake now, oblivious of the a Aswift sinking of her vital energy. =é<iShe must have the ring, for it was the pledge of a great glory. A breathless little girl flung herself into the cabin. It was Sophy Hanks, one of the many nieces who squattered like ducks about the settlement. “Mammy!” she cried shrilly. “Mammy Linkhorn!”’ She stammered with the excitement of the bearer of ill news. ‘“‘Abe’s lost your ring in the crick. He took it for a sinker to his lines, for Indian Jake telled him a piece of gold would cotch the grit fish. And a grit fish has cotched it. Abe’s bin divin’ and divin’ and can’t find it nohow. He reckons it’s plumb lost. Ain’t he a bad ’un, Mammy Linkhorn?”’ It was some time before the dying woman understood. Then she began feebly to cry. For the moment her ring loomed Adventure large in her eyes: it was the earnest of the promise and without it the promise might fail. She had not strength to speak or even to sob, and the tears trickled over her cheeks in dumb impotent misery. She was roused by the culprit Abe. He stood beside her with his wet hair streaked into a fringe along his brow. The skin of his neck ghstened wet in the opening of his shirt. His cheeks too glistened, but not with the water of the creek. He was crying bitterly. He had no words of explanation or de- fense. His thick underlip stuck out and gave him the appeal of a penitent dog; the tears had furrowed paler channels down grimy cheeks; he was the very incarnation of uncouth misery. But his mother saw none of these things. On the instant he seemed to her transfig- ured. Something she saw in him of all the - generations of pleading boys that had just passed before her, something of the stern confidence of the man over whose grave the ring had fluttered. But more—far more. She was assured that the day of the Seeker had passed and that the Finder had come. The young features were transformed into the lines of a man’s strength. The eyes dreamed but also commanded, the loose mouth had the gold of wisdom and the steel of resolution. The promise had not failed her. She had won everything from life, for she had given the world a master. Words seemed to speak themselves in her ear: Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bear- ing a savior of mankind. She lay very still in her great joy. The boy in a fright sprang to her side, knocking over the stool with the pannikin of water. He knelt on the floor and hid his face in the bedclothes. Her hand found his shaggy head. Her voice was very faint now but he heard it. “Don’t cry, little Abe,”’ she said. you worry about the ring, dearie. needed no more.” Half an hour later, when the cabin door was dim with twilight, the hand which the boy held grew cold. “Don’t It ain’t COmiclbook CO