The river press. [volume] (Fort Benton, Mont.) 1880-current, 1882-04-19
An Extract.

Il can never forgive you" and as Myrtle
Hathaway spoke these words, saying them
slowly, and with a very mournful cadence,
showing how every fibre of her being, every
pulsing nerve in her little, shapely body,
was being stretched to it's utmost tension by
the cruel weight of woe that was bearing
down upon her, she threw her arms around
Riordan's neck In q passionate abandon Of
grief that knew no bounds. And yet how
beauti I'll she looked, as she stood there that
soft, sensuous day in June, when the sky
was quivering with turquoise bloom, and a
large red -and-white COW stood outlined
against the western horizon. Wonderfully
clear brown eyes shining through a mass of
tangled hair that drifted over them. A pair
of red lips quivering with the sobs that
shook her slight frame. Soft. peachy cheeks,
Town which the tears-those saline but un-
erring evidences Of a broken heart-were
filling like April rains.
"And is there no receding from this re-
solve, my sweet ?" whispered Rupert in soft,
Pleading, Wabash avenue tones, as he bent
his young, manly face over the sadly beauti-
full one below, and drew the plumDy-rounded
form of the sobbing girl still closer to his
suspender. "You surely can not mean, my
love, for this one fault, this little break at
the quarter-pole, to send me away from you
forever, out into the dark, ~starless future of
a ruined love which your own fair hands
fboca hoplc -h;,b oor -or1x ~ ;oo oroo,,
s )oon with such a tender pathos and yet at
such q fearful clip-have spread the black
pail of the coId)y cruel words you have just
spoken. Say it ID only a bluff, my darling;
that you do not mean the words you have
s~poken-the blighting, carbolic acid words
that have wiped from the slate of Memory
the rose-tinted visions Of a happy past, and
left in their place only the dreadful mon
sters Of remorse and anguish that rear their
Kissing heads amid a trackless waste of
ruined hopes"
As he spoke, Rupert had drawn Myrtle
nearer to him, and when the last words fell
in trembling accents On her ear her head had
dropped upon his shoulder and she was sob
bing more violently than ever. When he
had finished she looked up to him with those
dusky-brown eyes from which the tears were
yelling, and sitting by a mighty effort the
sobs that were coming thick and fast from
beneath her liver-pad, spoke:
'You know, Rupert, she said, a winsome,
plenty of-caramels-this-We look stealing
gently and unostentiously over her pure, pas
s.onless face, ''that for months my life has
been wrapped up in yours; that your success
was my success, your grief my grief. You
know that in the fall, the golden-tinted fall,
Wien the leaves are turning brown and the
mince-pie is budding in the pantry | have
promised to be your bonny bride-to help
keep you broke for the balance of your life.
OF course, it is hard for me to keep this up,
to put forever behind me in the Woodshed of
my soul the bright visions of a happy future
{ at | had set my stakes to pass with yoa in
the Lotus Islands of a Chicago boarding
house. But my duty is plain, and | must not
shrink from it. Do not think that my love
for you has fled. II has never even offered
to start. DO not press me for an explana-
ton. | can only say that any man who is
sucker enough to back the ~favorite in a six
day walking match is not fly enough for
me. and stepping into the parlor Myrtle be-
gan singing the beautiful! chant, "Do not
fix the Gate in Summer" while Rupert, his
proud spirit crushed and his heart d~esolate,
started down town to get full.