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Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War by John Fox
page 30 of 183 (16%)
of the love of one who loves another. Only, to the sufferers the tragedy
is always as fresh as a knife-cut, and forever new.

Judith cared for nobody. Crittenden laughed and pleaded, stormed,
sulked, and upbraided, and was devoted and indifferent for years--like
the wilful, passionate youngster that he was--until Judith did love
another--what other, Crittenden never knew. And then he really believed
that he must, as she had told him so often, conquer his love for her.
And he did, at a fearful cost to the best that was in him--foolishly,
but consciously, deliberately. When the reaction came, he tried to
reëstablish his relations to a world that held no Judith Page. Her
absence gave him help, and he had done very well, in spite of an
occasional relapse. It was a relapse that had sent him to the mountains,
six weeks before, and he had emerged with a clear eye, a clear head,
steady nerves, and with the one thing that he had always lacked, waiting
for him--a purpose. It was little wonder, then, that the first ruddy
flash across a sky that had been sunny with peace for thirty years and
more thrilled him like an electric charge from the very clouds. The
next best thing to a noble life was a death that was noble, and that was
possible to any man in war. One war had taken away--another might give
back again; and his chance was come at last.

It was midnight now, and far across the fields came the swift faint beat
of a horse's hoofs on the turnpike. A moment later he could hear the hum
of wheels--it was his little brother coming home; nobody had a horse
that could go like that, and nobody else would drive that way if he had.
Since the death of their father, thirteen years after the war, he had
been father to the boy, and time and again he had wondered now why he
could not have been like that youngster. Life was an open book to the
boy--to be read as he ran. He took it as he took his daily bread,
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