Repository: UIHistories Project: Illio - 1896 [PAGE 88]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

i\uiti..uidy .U-.MIIIII the banister rail, around the angh- <d tin- wall h-nding u, the east wing, and t h e r e , in the dim light, garbed in his long, whin- ,oU d, r«»i,/and sa I,raw head of Mark hair which was almost standing out straight as a " ( inassian beautx V " with his eves flashing lik«- sparks from an electric, dynamo, stood (hrif Hafncr. of 'sO, with his revolver grasped in his hand. I addressed him in soothing term.**, lor he appeared dangerous and I was alone and unarmed. | | f responded in a very apologetic tone, for he seemed to fear that he might have shot some one. for he had heard no departing footsteps. He asked me into his room. We fumbled around ami finally lit a lamp, ".lust look t h e r e , " said Chris. J looked. His room was in the southeast corner of tin* east wing, top floor. Being of G e r m a n descent Chris had a splendid feather bed. At least it was up to that night. As I looked around it appeared to me that a cloudburst had paid a visit to his room and had spent its fury upon his feather bed ami left it an unartistic miniature tish pond. The room and the contents thereof, books, carpet, clothing, all showed evidence of a most heroic baptism, and Chris, as he stood there in the sickly lamplight, with his long, white, wet night robe sticking to his body and his 1 limbs, looked like a bather, just from the sea who had taken a " h e a d e r * in a 4i borrowed Mother H u b b a r d . " I looked at the ceiling. There, over the exact center of the bed on which Chris had been sleeping, was a carefully cut hole in the plaster, ami near it, though not making a prize target, were two smaller holes made by bullets from Chris' revolver, and oh! how wet the ceiling was. Chris dressed. H e got some nails and wire and fastened safe and sound the only means of egress to t h e regions above, the stairway door. There was no other avenue of escape from above, save through a hole in the ceiling of a vacant room, which hole was made by a misstep of an aspiring student who came down through lath and plaster on a previous occasion. Chris aroused a " P r e p " friend of his, and together these two sat in that vacant room and, like two terriers watching a rat hole for t h e forthcoming of their victim, these two sat out the night. But no one came. At daybreak they ascended the attic, and over Hafner's room found—two empty tubs and two empty buckets, only these, and nothing more. About nine o'clock that morning while on my way to chapel I overtook t h e serious Brenton. I slapped him on the back, which seemed to startle him. "Well, Srailer," I exclaimed, " you are one ahead, but tell me how you got down and w h e n ? " He professed innocence and ignorance, but finally said: " W e l l , don't tell Hafner, b a t as I was tired carrying all that water up those six flights of stairs I did not care to stay long, so I just came down the lightning rod and went to bed." * « * # • * * • • One Sabbath day, in the spring of 1882, daring my attendance at law school in Chicago, on one of my down town walks I happened to pass a modest Episcopal church. Something prompted me to enter. I did so, and there, within the chancel, in his ecclesiastical robes, conducting the service, with the tame serious look on his face as he wore when he came to make bis complaint to me on that night in spring, whom should I see, but "Smiler." Ah Chris! Ah Brenton! Here is my hand, yes, and my heart, too.

WM. N. BUTLXK, Tfc

101