Dan Hudson’s Sacrifice

Dan Hudson's Sacrifice.

A Story for Christmastide. BY ATTE RA.

I.

The brief tale I am about to tell, has not sweet scented mists of a romantic "long ago" for its setting. Indeed, but twenty years have Christmas chimes been rung and Christmas prayers been said since its happening. And, Christmas story though it is, the curtain does not once rise to reveal a bright array of candle lights, and the delightful odor of hemlock and spruce — hallowed incense of our childhood day. And more— the place is not verdant hillsides, "where shepherds watched," but a wilderness of sand and stone, belonging to that unknown and unknowable desert of our western wonderland, the Colorado Plateau. And, again, the time is not December, but August — burning, blighting August. Not- withstanding, I would have you listen, and at Christmastide. Fourteen years before the August of which I write, a pros- pector, known in eastern parlance as mountaineer, drifting slowly westward, found a desert of stone, cut and creased with canyons, the most wonderful in all the world. In one little canyon, or gorge, fifty miles from any human habitation, he found a stream and a stretch of land. In this little valley, or vale, (where was rich soil and bright verdure) he built a home, which on all

sides, save an opening to the west, was walled in by cliffs of sand- stone, red and treeless. Thither, from far-off new England hills, he brought his young wife and three toddling babes.

—

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 253

It was now the thirteenth anniversary of that home-coming, and the white heat, in which all nature swooned, was typical. Great masses of blue-gray clouds shifted, and, as if impelled by some power above and beyond, slowly rose from the horizon line. Their rifts and borders dashed with glints from the setting sun, quivered and glowed like living flame. "Ah, a dark cloud with a bright lining!" The exclamation came from a youth, who stood upon the brow of a rockbound ridge, beside the ruins of a mighty cliff, and dreamed a dream of the future. For more than an hour loving eyes —the eyes of a mother— had watched him there, as the twilight cut a silhouette of his lithe young form against the amber of the sky. "An artist," she murmured. "I know, I know, it was in my father's blood, it was my heritage, it is his— thank God?" She knew not that her son's gaze was far beyond the band of clouds, and that the burst of light had but that moment called him from his dream. A harsh voice shouting, "Whoa, there, you black beast!" startled the woman, and she hastened from the boulder on which she leaned, down rugged, stony steps, through a tangle of brush to the garden path, where she met a broad, stalwart man, the master of her mountain home. "Get the milk buckets, Annie," was his only greeting, after a day's absence. "That blamed boy has gone daft, I 'spose stands there on the ledge watchin' for the cows that's bin in cor- ral since sun. I'll have 'em to milk, tired as I am, unless you'll give a hand." Not tonight, Abraham. I've been ill all day, and came out only for a fresh breath. "Sick, are you!" returned the husband gruffly. "Well, then, why in thunder don't yu' go to bed, instead of whinin' 'round here?" With this angry remark he grabbed her arm, and pushed her rudely from the path. The same instant he felt a powerful hand grasp his collar, and before resistance could be made, he was whirled around and left sitting upon the ground. Over him tow- ered an angry man; a man of six feet and broad chest; a man

254 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

whose brown, mobile face had suddenly turned to stone; a man whose eyes flashed fire from the passion that burned within; a man — his son Dan, the "boy who had gone daft." In an instant the startled, breathless man was on his feet, and the two, father and son, glared at each other with fists clenched and bestial eyes. The young man first relaxed. "Father," he cried out, with a fearless voice, "for twenty years you have kept me in the traces; but henceforth I am a man, and shall take the part of a man, as I now perform the labor of one; and if you ever again, to my knowing, either by word or by touch, offer my mother an insult, to a man, sir, you shall answer — God witness between us." A low moan from the woman, who had fallen prostrate, with a pallor as of death upon her face, arrested the attention of the men. The son, with a spring swift and agile as a cat's, reached the mother's side, and with strong arms bore her tenderly to a place of rest. At that moment the canyon rang with the vibrant echoes of loud halloos. Dogs barked; horses whinnied; and the moun- taineer hastened to the broad lane, where he swung apart heavy gates that opened from the white, dusty canyon road below, to his verdant home. Dan and Dan's mother, (just awakened from her faint) knew by the hearty, ringing, "Ho, ho, friends, welcome to

the hermitage!" that Abraham Hudson, the master, would make good his reputation for hospitality, and do credit to his moun- tain appellation, "prospector's pard."

II.

A week had passed since the altercation in the garden path. Hudson had been genial, as usnal, to his visiting friends, prospec- tors from the river eighty miles away; but to his family glum and morose. With a gruff "good bye," called out as he released the creaking brake to his wagon, he started off on one of his two week trips to "the towns." Ah, that two weeks! To the mother, in her after years, as she looked back over the pathway of her woman's life, it was the hour of her heart's sweetest triumph. There she was, in the great silence of thewilder- ness,shut in by walls towering and omnious,but with a gladsome, ca-

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 255

ressing child (her little girl Elin — her rose of the desert) clasped in

her arms, and, protectingly at her side, her boy, her first-born, now a man; and to her came the solace for a mother's long anxiety. For twenty years she had watched her boy, a divine mystery of budding, growing, blossoming manhood. What a stretch of uncertainty, what a record of watching, waiting, praying! was all before It

her, a picture that could fade only with the light of life. The first sharp wail that announced the little one's arrival from a great

unknown; the first glimpse of a tiny face that fancy had long por- trayed; the first touch of eager lips; the first thrill from the quivering baby form that seemed to struggle for protection and for love. Yes, the helpless infant, the gladsome child, the quiet, dreaming youth, she had watched them all in him, and now — the man Much had come into that stretch of twenty years' time. Three of the little ones who had found in that mother's arms a cradle of rest, had grown strangely cold and quiet beneath her watch care. Death had found that home in the rocks. Three times the strong man and the fragile woman, husband and wife, had bowed together in the presence of the grim reaper. Three times were their souls laid bare in grief; and drawing near to mourn their common loss, they had seemed to understand and to thank God for each other. Silently, and none knew whence -per-

chance in the noon-day glare and heat of toil -perchance in the quiet hours when shadows crept, unseen powers had parted those human hearts, drawn closer by the hand of sorrow than by the bonds of love. And yet, the woman toiled on, a loneliness in her soul more vast, and more terrible, than that in the silent, lifeless rocks. He, who should have been her refuge, drew ever nearer to the worship of hidden gold, ever farther from humankind, and ever farther from his God. There, during the master's absence, in the long twilights, and in the glory of desert moonlight, those two, mother and son, held communion; and found that sweetest comradship the world affords, the sympathy of souls. As the mother sat, one bright evening, with Elin's head pil-

lowed in her lap, Dan listened till the child slumbered, and the lullabys were hushed; when, suddenly, he began to talk with an earnest vehemence she had never heard before from him.

—

256 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

"Mother," he said, "it seems strange to me in what utter blindness human beings can live. Do you know, mother, what my six months away at school did for me? To be sure I learned but little of grammar and arithmetic in that time, but in some miracu-

lous way, everybody and everything I had known, myself included, had their masks pulled off; and the world became a different place. I learned that I was not quite like other boys from ranch homes. I

could read and write with ease; and, to my own surprise, possessed quite a treasury of historical knowledge —the tales you had so often told, and encouraged me to retell. My knowledge of the Bible, too, you think me dull in that, but my teacher thought it did me credit. That teacher taught us other and better things, mother, than our books contained; and I feel, somehow, that he opened for me the doors to another sphere where —where — well, I

don't exactly know where, or what, God has given me only this: talents and powers, and I mean to use them for my own betterment and to his glory. I'm not content to be a cunning fox with a hole in the rocks of this desert."

Dan's eyes flashed, but his voice grew strangely low and musical, vibrant with boyish passions long pent up. "Mother, my jnother,' 1 and he took a step nearer in reveren- tial attitude, then, bending low, he touched the soft waves of her hair with his lips. "Mother," again he said, "do you know, I

can't help but think that your companion — your husband, I mean should have been like that man, that teacher I adore." • The mother started, her lips moved, but she made no sound, and her son went on: know that my father took you when you were a young, "I homeless orphan, and made you his wife. You were grateful, you even loved him, for he was a hero in your eyes. Your love and gratitude, I know, also, will end in a life-long constancy, in unend- ing devotion, and what does he give, what will he give in return?

He promised protection, to love and cherish. You believed, rough and uncouth though he seemed, that he would always be gentle with you; that you would be his helpmeet, his wife, his queen!

And now, how is it? He desired gold, not the gold of honest toil, and great achievement, but gold that waits far off in the pockets of the earth, for the grasp of the adventurer. His manly endur-

"

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 257

ance, his fearless exploits were, I grant, from the hero's soul, but to what end did he so desire weal ill? Did he ever strive for the welfare of mankind, for the betterment of the world, or was his hunger but the miser's greed? In his efforts to gratify the appe- tite for adventure and for gain, did he ever pause for one moment to consider what wilderness life would mean to his frail, young wife? I think not. She was dragged from pillar to post, to live in tents, in hovels, in unsheltered wilderness camps. Every craving of his restless, roving nature he has pampered and fed, while her heart has gone forever hungry. Three of her babes, snatched by the hand of death from her warm breast, are laid where the wolf will

forever howl, and the viper forever find his home. Abram Hudson's wife, his gentle, loving wife — my mother, is a bond woman; and it breaks the heart of her son. My father has gold now, sufficient for a home in civilized lands, with rest for his wife and education for his children. Will he leave this place, think you, where, among his fellows, (self-made outcasts of society) he is a chieftain, a 'hale fellow well met?' Never, unless help comes from One greater than man; which, for his sake and for ours, may the Father above grant. Do you know, mother, that already he entices me with gold to give up my school, my ambition, all that would make me worthy of companionship with noble men, men of action, men of culture, that he may have my service here? "Once he was, to my childish mind, what he is now to my little sister's, a great man, a hero of many daring deeds, and my

self-sacrificing mother helped to keep up the illusion; hut his boasts — "Dan, Dan, my boy!" interrupted the mother, with pleading exclamation; but, with impulsive gesture, the lad went on, his words quick, his voice tense from the train of thought bursting from a long silence: "I know, I know, mother — 'children should honor and obey,

that their days may be long,' and all that. I should pray for my

days to be short in this land which the Lord giveth to howling beasts and creeping reptiles. Poor honor, it seems to me, is that a parent might gain through a child's greed, and not his love; and, oh, how bitter for a loving child to learn that honor is undeserved! To Elin, father is now as great as the kings in her story little

—

258 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

books, but to father, what is little Elin? A princess deserving all that he can bestow, or a child born to serfdom, whom he has the right to imprison here in this cage of scorching, blistering rock? "Hear me, mother, for this once I must speak the bitter truth that eats at my heart.I must tell you— he— is— a hard — man— a— grim —jailor! whose passions have been his highest law; and yet, according to his own code, my father, thank God, is a man of high honor, and, psrchance, in his stony heart may yet be found a crevice of untarnished gold. Listen, mother!" Dan's voice was low and sweet again, "listen — have vowed to rescue I

you and Elin, and perchance the grim jailor, too, from this prison house! How, I know not, but my faith is great, and the Lord will be my support." Together, that night, Dan and his mother prayed as they had never prayed before, for divine guidance. The next day was one of earnest fasting and petition. Dan decided to help his father for a few months longer, when the freighting season would be over and contracts with the miners would be fulfiled; then, at the begin- ning of the new year, to set out for school and for a new life." "I have," he said, "a little means of my own, and on Decem- ber 25, I shall be what the law calls of age. That, mother, will be my second real birthday: but I shall wish you still to feel that I am yours —your Christmas child grown to manhood; and may the

day come when you will feel that this great world of evil and of good, is a little better because your child has lived." Mrs. Hudson listened to her son with infinite pride and with infinite pain in her face. Did the thought of parting with her son bring with it a premonition of ill? or had she in that thought come very near in sympathy to the mother of sorrows, whose Son was a sacrifice for the whole world? Tenderly Dan kissed her white, pain-stricken face. "Don't grieve, mother," he said; "I have looked forward for years and years to the birthday when it will be my right to choose. Not for myself alone have I wished it; but that I may go from this place, which has never once seemad to me a right place in which to live; for, even when a child, I caught the spirit of your loneli- ness and my own; and I resolved some day to go forth and build a home, a real home, for you, and for father, too, should he wish.

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 259

Every time I heard a wolf howl, something in my heart would say, 'This is his home and not yours, go! go! and leave the wilderness to him.' "Mother," again Dan pleaded, "think not of that dear Christ- mas with a heart of dread; for on that day I shall be more to you than I have ever been, and I feel in my very soul that the Lord will make it for us all the beginning of a new life."

III.

August heat, white, sifting, penetrating, had burned for nearly thirty days. The scant vegetation of the desert had turned gray and crisp; but the sandstone wilds, though submitted for thous- ands of times to that furnace heat had not yet turned molten. The silence was so vast it seemed to bound the very earth, and to stifle every breath of air; and yet this silence was one day broken. Living, moving specks, men with their beasts of burden, threaded a pathway through the rock-bound sands. Abram Hudson and his son, for they it was who traveled the desert through the August heat, were on their way with food and supplies for a prospector's store or cache, whence miners would fetch them to their camps. Though but the fulfilment of a con- tract, that meant to the two men a dangerous trip for a handful of gold, its non-fulfilment would have been dishonor to themselves, suffering and, perchance, death to their fellows. The travelers had made use of the long, shadowy, but not cool hours before daybreak, hoping to find some sort of shelter and rest during the noontime heat. To save three days of travel, and to insure, as they believed, water for man and beast, the freighters had left the circuitous mountain trail for a cut-off leading through a rock chasm which was, at flood time, a river bed. Like the walls of Colorado's grand canyon, the cliffs on either side of the wash were, for hundreds of feet, perpendicular and impenetrable; in truth, a sixty mile crack or crevice in the solid rock. In these great walls, though often miles apart, were huge, hollow, basin-like shelves, known as water pock- ets. The spring rains filled these pockets making reservoirs of water that lasted for months; and to their existence many travel-

260 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

ing prospectors owed their lives. The Hudsons planned to water at the fifteen-mile pocket soon after sunrise, and at the twenty- mile pocket to pitch camp. At this pocket was a cross-cut crevice in the cliffs, which afforded a steep and rugged pathway to the heights abov^e, the only outlet for human feet within a forty-mile stretch; and, in case of cloudburst storms, the only place of escape from the torrent that sometimes filled the wash. The trip from Muddy Springs, had been a rough ride, long and dry; and as the little party neared the first pockets the horses sniffed and whinnied, and the men wet their lips and parched throats with the last insipid drops from their canteens. To their dismay they found the pockets, large and always before well filled, nearly dry. The horses rubbed their noses in the basins of mud while the men climbed to the shelves above. No water was found. Would another stretch of five miles bring them relief? To return to the springs they had left behind, in that more than tropic heat, seemed impossible; while to push

on to the next pockets, and find no water, they knew meant cer- tain death. The men looked at each other in silence. "God have mercy!" muttered the elder! Dan's answer was a long and searching look at the clouds above. Men had been rescued from that furnace by sudden rains, and men, he knew, had died in that pitiless heat. Both men, without a word, took from their empty canteens a mouthful of damp coffee grounds, and mounting their jaded beasts urged them slowly on. They had dropped the loads from the pack animals, and one was left to die. Abram Hudson's .face soon grew purple, and his tongue swelled. Dan pushed ahead at a slightly quicker pace, found water, and hastened on the return track, to find his father fallen from his horse, unconscious. At sunset that day both men and animals were in camp, refreshed and rested; but the supply of water from the lower pockets was nearly exhausted, and preparations were made for a climb in the cross-crevice to the basins above. When half way up the cliff, and the men believed within short distance of water, they both rested themselves upon a flat shelf projecting from the cliff. At the shelf's further end a slen-

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 261

der pine shot upward, apparently grown from the solid rock. Back of this,ard running the entire length of the shelf, was a cave, whether deep or shallow the uncertain light failed to reveal. "Rest here, father, the climb on up is very steep and will be too much for you. I'll fill my canteens, if I find water, alone, and then come for yours." The father, still weak from the collapse of the morning, threw himself at full length upon the floor of the shelf, while Dan climbed slowly and cautiously on. Each shelf grew narrower, and the loose pieces of rock at their basements more frequent. Seventy feet above his father's resting place, Dan found water. While filling his canteen he was startled by a fierce and tremend- ous growl that seemed to end in a base ruar, as it echoed from cliff to cliff; while above the awful noise, he heard his father's ter- rified voice calling for help!

Springing quickly to an overhanging shelf, Dan stretched himself in position to get a view of the shelf below. There, in the top of the pine, which swung far out over the gulf below, was his father, huddled, and crying out hoarsely for help. At the tree's base floundered and panted a great grizzly bear! With bristling mane and gnashing teeth, he alternately pawed at the cliff and the trunk of the tree. Splinters of bark and twigs flew far out into the air, and dropped to the depths below. For a moment the bear would rise to his haunches, sniff the

air, and again return to his clawing and his fierce belching growls. His angtr was furious, and yet he seemed loth to risk his wf ight upon the slender, swinging tree. To reach the bed of the wash below, where were guns and ammunition, Dan would be obliged to cross the entire length of the ledge on which the angry animal puffed and bellowed, and, were that possible, he would' doubtless be too late to rescue his father, whose position seemed to grow every instant more perilous, as the tree bent with his weight and limbs broke beneath his feet. For two full minutes, which seemed a time unpardonable, Dan lay and watched, his whole being surprised and paralyzed. Then, with a loud shout, he bade his father try to swing his weight towards the face of the cliff, and to keep tight his hold. Hastily, then, the lad threw aside canteens, coat and boots. From a little

262 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

leather breast-pouch he hastily withdrew a small packet, which he slipped beneath his hat-band; and from his trousers pocket he drew a large, strong-bladed knife, the only weapon in his reach. With quick steps he descended the rugged pathway of the cliff. When near his father, and directly above the wide shelf, he shouted, with clear, unfaltering voice: "Father, hold steady — tell mother good-bye — God be with you!" Lightly he swung to the shelf's edge and paused. The great maddened beast whirled around, glared at his slender antagonist, and made a rush. Twice Dan thrust with his knife, and twice the beast struck back; though fearing, apparently, to get near the brink where the boy stood to lure him. A moment the bear paused, then with a fierce gnashing sound of teeth and throat, and a sideward, swinging rush, he rose to his haunches, extended his great claws and grabbed at the youth. Dan stepped back. A terrible cry of protest and of human anguish at that instant reached his ear. Without seeming to hear, he sprang forward with a mighty thrust, throwing his lithe form upon the panting breast of the furious brute. They grappled — man and beast— struggled, swayed, and plunged to the depths below!

IV.

Two weeks had passed. The freighters, father and son, were expected home in twelve days. Anxiously Mrs. Hudson waited, her only companion the seven-year-old Elin, and a hired boy. On the fifteenth day Mr. Hudson drove slowly through the home gates, with but three of the seven horses he had taken away, Dan's horse was saddled and riderless. The father was pale and emaciated, his voice husky, his words of greeting inarticulate. With trembling limbs he tried to dismount, but fell in an unconscious heap to the ground. For seven days he writhed and tossed in fever and delirium. Often he muttered Dan's name and something about Christmas, but there seemed no connection. On the eighth day he wakened suddenly and sat up. To his

wife's pitiful pleadings for Dan — for her boy — he said abruptly:

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 263

"Dan! our boy, Dan, oh, yes, Annie, Dan is dead; on Christ- mas day we will bury him." Again he relapsed into delirium, and muttered something about the cliff, the awful gnashing noise, and that terrible, bleed- ing" wound. These were the only articulate words the eager, listening woman ever caught. Slowly the sick man recovered, but was very silent, and the look of pain ever present in his face hushed the questions of his wife, and chilled her very soul. Once her husband put out his hand, as if to touch hers, but quickly drew it back again, and turned his face to the wall. When at length he walked about, he avoided his wife and child, and seemed ever loth to touch things that had belonged to Dan. Once she caught him intently watching Elin as she slept; and then, throwing his hands upward as if in dumb, frenzied suppli- cation, he rushed from the room into the midnight darkness, whence he returned not until morning. Once, only once, she saw him lead Dan's horse to water and caress the animal as it drank. Then he sat down upon the creek bank and intently eyed his hands. With a sickening shudder she recalled, now, that he avoided touching or being alone with her; and that he had ceased to fondle little Elin, the only being whom he had treated, always, with tenderness. She recalled, also, in face of all this, that he

had returned from his trip with but scant clothing, and that ter- ribly begrimed— perhaps stained! Like a two-edged sword, a great pain entered her heart. Was he — her husband — a — man— of — guilt? Her whole being was smitten; but she rose above her stricken self, determined to find the truth, yet how, God alone could tell! Her very look of fear, and distress had driven her husband, she felt, to silence. An attempt to force him, she knew would be as useless as to seek confession of the hard, unyielding desert cliffs. Hudson noticed the forced courage, the determination that had come to her, and grew solicitous, almost tender in his help- lessness. Nothing was forgotten that would relieve her from labor or care — no harsh words now, no angry acts, but of Dan he never spoke.

" —

264 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

Three months thus passed. December weather had come, with cutting winds, but no snow; and the sun was still bright with a sort of winter glare. The fall work was finished, and Hudson now grew restless. For hours, through the day and far into the night, he tramped the garden walk. Two trips he made to distant towns, and preparations for an unnamed journey seemed under way. One evening, the twenty-first of December, his tramp, tramp, on the garden path was quick and impulsive. Finally it stopped short, and he abruptly entered the room where his wife sat. "Annie," he said, in a strange, choking voice, "I have sold sold the place. I'm going to take you and Elin where people live — where you'll be happy." For a moment the gruff man paused, and stifled a sob. "Annie, wife," he went on, "will you go with me, first, to bury him? It will be a hard trip; but Dan wished it —on Christmas — his last words. When we get with Dan, I'll try to tell you all about it— how he — With frightened eyes, Annie sprang to her feet, and stared into her husband's blanched face; and, for answer she sprang into his outstretched arms. Upon his heaving breast she sobbed out the pent up agony, the doubt and distrust of all those cruel weeks. On December 25, 18 — a funeral was held in Big Pocket ,

Wash, of the Colorado plateaus. Six men had preceded the par- ents and sister of Dan Hudson, and with strong, tender hands had made all things ready. For a little time the friends withdrew; and there, beside an open grave, in which stood a coffin of strong wood — Dan's last resting place — Abram Hudson told his wife of his son's sacrifice; and how he had found the unconscious boy, his flesh mangled and torn, in the embrace of the dead brute; how Dan had revived before his death, and had sent to his mother a message of love. He had wished to be buried there in the wash, and on Christmas day. "I have promised," he said, "to spend Christmas with my mother. She will come, and the promise will be fulfiled — her boy will be near." "I stripped off my clothing, Annie, to bind his bleeding wounds, and my blankets were his shroud. In the little cave, there, under the cliff, his body waited for burial; but of his suffer-

—

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 265

ing, Annie — my wife — do not ask. In his hatband I found this a tress of his mother's hair, turned round one of his own black curls; but better than all else were his last dear words— 'As my mother loves you, and is true, love and cherish her; and forget not, my father, that the Son of God was sacrificed to save us all.'"

---

Ten years after the funeral in Big Pocket Wash, of the Colo- rado plateaus, Abram Hudson, a rugged old man with whitened hair,was seen to enter a cosy cottage home— his home and Annie's— in one of Utah's thrifty towns. "Little mother," he said, (that was his form of tenderest greeting) "little mother, I have bought Tom Brown's carriage don't look frightened, I'm not fixin' to runoff. The rig is strong and easy -riding, and has a warm, thick cover. It is Christmas next week, you know, and I thought you and me and Elin would just go and spend it in the wash — a sort of thanksgiving Christmas, Annie. I'd like to spend a day near Dan, again, and I'd like to tell the Lord, while I'm there, that we know our blessings are from him, and are worth more than the gold of the whole world." Annie Hudson's answer was a sob of unspeakable joy. Provo, Utah.

The British Budget was rejected by the House of Lords on November 30, by a vote of 350 to 75. The action was taken against the advice of many of the peers who warned the Lords of the danger of the policy adopted. By this action of the Lords a new issue is intro- duced into British politics, which in importance far transcends the ques- tion of the budget. The House of Lords is almost entirely a hereditary body, and the question is whether they have the right to overrule the

House of Commons, which is a representative body, on the questions of finance. It has never before happened that a budget providing the rev-

enues for the year, duly passed by the House of Commons, has failed to receive the consent of the House of Lords, and on December 2, the House of Commdns, by a vote of 349 to 134 adopted a resolution declaring that the action of the House of Lords was "a breech of the constitution and a usurpation of the rights of the House of Commons," and on the fol- lowing day the King prorogued the Parliament until January 17, 1910. The question now goes to the people.