The evening world. Newspaper, February 4, 1922, Page 5

THREE SECTIONS. SATU = THE MAN WHO KNEW NOTHING ON EARTH DAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1922. A STARRY LOVE STORY By TRISTRAM TUPPER Illustrated by WILL B. JOHNSTONE CHARACTERS IN THE STORY. JOHN TEMPLE, an astronomer and mathematician and victim of cir- cumstances, EVALYN WELLS, an heiress, four and twenty, pretty and devoted to the memory of a boy admirer of her childhood. BESSIE, her maid, who assists in the working out of the plot. SIRIUS, a canine listener, in entire sympathy with his master. , HE blinds of Rockhouse were thrown wide for the first time The month in seven years, was June a.d Evalyn Wells was four-and-twenty. Evalyn had been summoned from abroud by the trustee of her father’s estate. Because of an _ irreparable quarrel back in the spring of 1917, the jate Senator had left Evalyn as near penniless as would be compatible with her station in life. Diagonally across the road stood the other house at the Corners. This building had formed the Annex of the County Poorhouse, whose main struc- ture had disappeared. A gaunt, pallid man, with two days’ stubble on his face, appeared in the doorway, and emitted a quavering, pedantic imitation of a whistle. A yel- corner of Jow streak shot around ."1e the thin little house, then the man closed the door softly. Outside there was the throb of a motor, the ring of a dinner gong. “Meat, butter, egge . . " poomed the itinerant butcher. “I don’t come again till Saturday.” “Two of us, three days.” calculated the man. “Six steaks will do.” An .hour later he lifted two large steaks from the ‘op of a rusty, luke- warm stove in the basement and quietly replaced them in their origi- pal wrapper. “For myself I could do well enough. you, my friend. . Princess Blue Mouse raised her head from her paws, sniffed, and raced across the tennis court. Evalyn glanced up from her self-imposed la- bor of weeding the tennis court. “Shades of Abraham _ Lincoln!” gasped the girl. “Madam " faltered the man “you live here.” “Yes,” Evalyn smiled. “I've ‘been expecting you all day. Have you had anything to eat?” “T was about to speak of that” “We've finished our lunch,” the girl informed him. She assured him she would run to the house and tel] the maid. In the mean time he could start where she had left off. “Pull them like this.” She demonstrated, “Now try. Shake the roots and pat down the earth with your foot. Don’t leave any holes, Start here.” The gir) paused among the fiower- ine pear trees. “Your mame?” she called. his head from the court " he stammered, “Bessie,” Evalyn said to her® little maid. “Some one has sent us a man He'll eat us out of house and home. Rut it can't be helped.” ATER, Bessie appeared with a flushed face. “That man, Miss Evalyn, I'm afraid of him.” He had given half his dinner to the dog that was running wild with Prin- cess Blue Mouse, and he brought a bag full of things—groceries, six steaks! “Six steaks!" He raised “John echoed Evalyn, The maid had got hold of the newspaper. “There are two escaped convicts And have you noticed how pale he is?’ Evalyn started slowly for the tennis court, And she told herself that the gaunt man laboring with the weeds made a very pleasant picture, “Tf you'll come with me to the corn- house,” said Evalyn presently to him, “we'll get a bag of gait.” Several] largs white bags, sten “Hay Salt—112 Ibs.,” lay in the co:n- house, John took hold of one by the ears. But I must think of ‘I’m sorry,” he flush spreading ‘7 can't lift it.” Together they dragged fhe sack to the doorsill. “Now get the wheel- barrow. Put it under theqdoor and pull the bag into it.” Evalyn directed the man to get be- tween the shafts, to lift, to push, The wheelbarrow, of a slight eminence, rushed forward, careened, turned in a circle, and only Evalyn’s agility saved her, “John,” she cried, “are you trying to admitted, a deep over his pallid face. SECTION TWO, ~ PRINCESS BLUE MOUSE, the companion of Sirius and pet of the Wells farm. MR. MARSDON, a patron of education, with an unsettled difference with Temple’s father. DEAN THOMAS, a college official, under obligations to Mars¢on. CATHERINE FARRELL, a young artist, a friend of Evalyn Wells, make me ridiculous, or don’t you know anything on earth?” “I'm afraid I don't know anything on earth,” said the man, “but Tll try to learn,” HE chores finislied, the man with towel and soap and fresh clothing passed along the road to the willows, where he gave himself and his dog a scrubbing. After supper he ascended the hill back of his house. ‘There he stood gazing into the clear June sky. “My canine friend,” he said solemnly to the dog, “I am not a farmer. My father was an astronomer. A little man with a thin white beard and eyes as limp and faded as a faded blue napkin, white fringed; an old man at fifty, standing beside a long shining brass telescope where two great thor- oughfares converged, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. And there each olear night during eight years I stood be- DR. MARSDON KISSED EVALYN. “WHO !S THE COMPOSITE OF LinCOaN £899 GRANT?’ HE SMILED.