An Affecting Story,

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 129, 30 April 1872, Page 7

An Affecting Story,

A one-armed horseman, lately travelling I through Missouri, stopped at a blacksmith’s shop in Cedar City to have his horse shod. The smith noticed his empty sleeve, and asked him if lie had lost his arm in the war. He replied with a sigh that ho had, and added, with much emotion, that on going hack to his home at the close of the war he found that his wife, who thought he was dead, had moved away, and he had since been unable to obtain a trace of her. “ What is your name ?” asked the blacksmith. “J. M. Waldrop,” was the 'reply. The smith suddenly released the hoof of the horse over which he had been bonding, and, without looking at the ex-soldier, cried, “ Follow me into the house,” and hurriedly led the way. Waldrop mechanically obeyed the unexpected bidding, and was ushered into the presence of a comely matron, around whose sewingchair throe happy children wore playing. She was the blacksmith’s wife, ike mother of his little ones, and rose to greet the stranger on his appearance with her husband at the door. No sooner, however, did she catch sight of his face than she uttered a heartrending shriek and fainted. In Waldrop she recognised her husband. In the firm belief that he had been killed in the war she had married the blacksmith of Cedar City, and was already the mother of throe line children. After the first agitation of the assembled group had subsided, Waldrop and the smith retired to the smithy to talk the matter over. Devotedly as the smith loved his wife, he fully admitted Waldrop’s superior claims, and it was in the cud agreed that she herself should decide between them. They accordingly returned to the sitting-room, where, after a torrent of tears and Self-reproaches, the wife came to the conclusion that she ought to return to her first husband. Suddenly dropping her head, however, on the blacksmith’s shoulder, she declared with hitter lamentations that she could not leave her children. The smith “eyed her wistfully” for a moment, and then said in a husky voice, “ Yon shall take them, my dear.” Some hours later, when the steamboat St. Luke stopped at the landing, Waldrnp went on board with his “thickly veiled and still weeping wife,” and the blacksmith followed leading the children. The boat’s hell rang for the starting. The dread moment of separation was at hand. The captain, the crew, and the passengers were affected to tears at the touching scone. “ With great drops miling down his tawny cheeks,” the smith kissed the children one after the other, and hade the mother an eternal good-bye. lie then shook hands long and earnestly with Wjildrup, and walked quietly to the shore, lie never turned his face towards the boat, which soon passed out of sight, but strode on with head bowed donn to the homo where fhe voices of his wife and children would welcome him no more. —(JiiicluuaM Jr,:i ;hxr.