Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1885-09-18
CHAPTER NNIN.

Ronald's friendship with the hospitlablc
widow and his acquaintanceshIp with
those three boon competitions of hers grew
apace. and many merry evening the,
all of them had together in the brillian
little parlor, Ronald singing his own ul
any other songs without stint, the bl
skipper telling elaborately facetious High
land stories, the widow bountiful wit
her cigars and her Meet and Chandon
And yet he was Hill at ease. He woll
not admit to himself, of course, that /,
rather despised these new acquaintanC,
for were they not most generous an
kind toward him nor yet that the lor
hllarlty he Joined in was on his part
times tribe forced. Indeed. he con.
not very well have defined the cause g.
tins dlsquietude and restlessness and a.
most despair that was present to his cor
seriousness even when the laugh was Il;
its loudest and the glasses going round
most mcrrly. But the tru IN was he hHu
begun to lose heart in his work. I he
first glow of determination that had en-
abled him to withstand the depression Of
the dual days and the mOnOtonous labor
had subsidized now. The brilliant future
the Americans had painted tor him did
not seem so attractive. Meenie was away,
perhaps never to be met with more, and
the Old glad days that were filled with the
light OF her presence We're all gone now,
and growing ever more and more dis
tant. And in the solitude of the little
room up there in Port Dundas ROad-with
the gray atmosphere ever present at the
windows, and the dull rumble of the
carts and wagons without-he was now
getting into a habit of pushing aside his
books for while aud letting his fancies
go far aiield; Insomuch that his heart
seemed to grow more and more sick with
i'll him, and more and more he grew to
think that somehow life mad gone all
wrong with him.
-. -.
iiarly known as Balamanno Brae 1t is
III one of the poorer neighborhoods of the
town, and is, in truth, rather squalid
and embarrassing place; but it has the
one striking popularity of being eXtraord-
inarily steep, having been built on the
side of a considerable hill Now one must
have powerful Imagination to see in this
long, abrupt, blue-gray thoroughfare,
with its grmy pavements and house
fronts, and its CUTTERS running with dirty
water, any resemblance to the wide slopes
of Ben ClebrIg and the carolinG rils that
flow down to Loeb MAYER; but, all the
same, Ronald had n curious fancy for
mounting this long incline, and that at the
hardest pl ICE he could 90; for sometimes
in that little room, he felt almost like II
Gagged animal dying for wider air, II
more active work and here at least was
height that enabled him to feel the pow
er of his knees, while the mere upward
progress was a kind of insprting thing,
one always having vague fancy that one
is going to see farther in getting higher.
Alas there was but the one inevitable
termination to these repeated climbings,
and that not the wide panorama embrac-
ing Loeb Loyal and Ben Hope, and the
TAR Kyle of Tongue, but n wretched little
lane called Rotten Row-a double line of
gloomy houses, with here and there an
fashioned cottage with matched
ROOT, and with everywhere prevailing the
close atmosphere an odor of boiled her
rings And then, again, looking back,
there was no yellow and wide shining
Strath Terry, with its knobs of purple
heather and its devious ripping burns,
but only the great, dark, grim, myster-
lous city, weltering in its smoke and duly
grooming. as it We're, under the grinding
burden Of its monotonous toll