Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1921)

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42 Horizon Island, that Doris had been born the night her mother died. The infant knew nothing of the solitary, grief-racked figure which conducted her funeral the following day. She only knew that the grave in which her mother lay was a thing of perfect beauty, a spot of reverently tended marvel flowers ... a thing about which there' was no sadness; only a mystic spell which she could not quite understand. The nineteen years which had passed since that day of crowning misery in Peter Merriam's life had been years of swift-flowing happiness for the girl who was now budding into supreme womanhood. In all those years she had known no pain, no suffering, no trouble. A half dozen times she had gone with her father into the city of Charleston, but these voyages into the staid, stolid old town had been bright spots of happy adventure in her tranquil, sheltered life, expeditions preceded by eager anticipation, with later the exquisite fullness of realization. To her, Charleston was a mammoth place where countless people lived and which therefore was a metropolis of happiness. These little voyages of hers into urban life — such as it was — were scintillant spots in a monotone of placidity. She plunged into each with the zest of a city resident planning a picnic — and she was as glad to return. SHE was not insufferable in her happiness, nor more than human. She did not go about prattling platitudes of happiness. She was happy because in all her life there had been no experience of a somber emotion. The picnickers who came fortnightly into her life came with smiles on their faces and laughter in their eyes: they were happy because they were picnicking— reveling in enjoyment. They anchored in the inlet at the northern end of the island, rowed ashore and bathed from the hard, white beach. And they played games and ran races and ate lunch in a natural little picnic grove of scrub oak and myrtle and cabbage palm. And always there was song and laughter and happiness . . . and in all her life Doris Merriam had known naught else. Occasionally she glimpsed in the deep set eyes of her stalwart father an unfathomable light, a sudden flashing as of bitter reminiscence. But she did not understand and did not question. For, had he answered her questionings — which he would not have done — she could not have understood. For nearly thirty years now he had been keeper of the Horizon Island Light which signalled ships away from the treacherous shifting sandbars of the Carolina coast. At first it had been a one-man station with a weak flickering light. But two years since the government had installed a modern stone lighthouse with steel stairway and steel flooring, and a snug little brick home had been built for Peter Merriam and his daughter, and she had qualified as his assistant and was now a government employee, just as was her father. It was a fine, modern lighthouse that they manned together; a staunch little structure with its powerful carbon light flashing far out to sea; current furnished by a tiny powerhouse with a fifteen horsepower gasolene motor, 220-volt generator and a transformer which stepped up the current to a magnificent thing of eighteen hundred volts. It was the great event of their lives, this building of a twoman light, and Doris's qualification as her father's assistant, and he drilled into her plastic mind the single immutable tenet of the Service — The light must burn. Together they studied the plant until either knew all that there was to know about it from motor to arc, and never were they happier than in piloting interested visitors up the steel stairway to the glass-enclosed turret from which the light flared forth its message of safety and good cheer to the casuals of thesea. So, for nineteen years she had lived ; a song ever on her lips, laughter in her heart. And her father stubbornly refused to face the future — and her womanhood refused to face it — until decision was brought to him. Photoplay Magazine It was not that he was neglectful, but rather that he allowed himself to become blind to the inevitable. He was vaguely troubled as he visioned her magnificent maturity — troubled and inordinately proud. But when his forehead was most deeply creased by lines of worry — there came her carefree, innocent laughter to rob him of apprehension. And so night came upon them — came slowly, caressingly They rose and walked to their little home, his arm still about her waist. And before starting the little gasolene motor in the powerhouse he questioned her once again — And so. Bill Walters, condemned murderer, donned the storm-coat of the to the door and Peter Merriam saw her creep into Bill s arms "Is my little girl happy.''" "Very happy, Daddy ..." But there was a slight rising inflection to the answer; almost a query of self. And within her breast an indesignate yearning. . . IT was done very suddenly and efficiently and later, when the official probe was made, the officer in charge of the prisoner was severely reprimanded but not otherwise punished. According to the passengers, the trip toward Columbia was insufferably hot and the keeping of handcuffs upon the condemned murderer would have been inhuman. Besides, the deputy in charge of Bill Walters — alias Red Watson — was a large man physically and his captive was almost 'boyish of stature. And the deputy was armed. It came quite unexpectedly while the train was crawling laboriously northward along the edge of Hell Hole swamp. The unfortunate passengers of the noisome day coach lay back panting in the musty plush seats, oblivious to droning insects and a veritable hail of cinders which swirled stingingly in through the open windows. Outside was the dull gray landscape of stagnant water,