Above all her admirers she liked best of all Adam Drumheller, a shrewd young farmer of the neighborhood, and eventually married him. Three children were born in quick succession, in the small tenant house on his father’s farm in Chest Township, where the young couple had gone to live immediately after their wedding.
Shortly after the birth of the last child old Jacob Drumheller died, and the son and his family moved into the big stone farmhouse near the banks of the sulphurous Clearfield Creek. It was not long after this fortuitous move that the young wife began to show signs of the favorite Pennsylvania mountain malady–consumption. Whether it was caused by a deep-seated cold or came about from sleeping in rooms with windows nailed shut, no one could tell, but the beautiful young woman became paler and more wax-like, until she realized that a speedy end was inevitable. Many times she found comfort in her misfortune by having her husband promise that in the event of her death he would never remarry.
“Never, never,” he promised. “I could never find your equal again.”
He was sincere in some respects; it would be hard to find her counterpart, and she had made a will leaving him everything she possessed, and he imagined that the pot of gold transformed into a bank balance or Government bonds would be found somewhere among her effects.
Before ill health had set in he had quizzed her many times, as openly as he dared, on the whereabouts of her share of the pot.
“It is all safe,” she would say. “It will be forthcoming some time when you need it more than you do today,” and he was satisfied.
As she grew paler and weaker Adam began to think more of Alvira Hamel, another comely girl whom he had loved when he railroaded out of Johnstown, at Kimmelton, and whom he planned to claim as his own should Yolande pass away.
SCENE IN SNYDER-MIDDLESWARTH PARK
Perhaps his thoughts dimly reflected on the dying wife’s sub-conscious mind, for she became more insistent every day that he promise never to remarry.