Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1890-04-03

| nine script:
| "Couragei Easter will sometime
| bring you Joy and peace"
Ralf Blethen had sat cold and I'M
finching when his sentence "to the
penitentiary for life" was being read
but he lowered his head on his hands
now, and wept like a child,
He had been here three months and
these were the first tears that he had
shed: he seemed to himself like an au-
tomaton by day and mailman by
night.
It had been hard to bear, and all
coming SO unexpected, too, but he had
been quite conscious of one feeling day
or night, and that was a feeling of
thankfulness that his mother had not
lived to see his trouble.
he was an orphan and had been in
the employ of his uncle, wagon and
carriage manufacturer, for three years.
Among the other employees were two
young men, one older, the other
younger than himself, and it so hap
pened that they were all aspirants for
the same young lady's favor.
The strife had been a friendly one
however, until she dismissed Blethen
and the younger one named Masters,
retaining Clarkson, who was fully ten
years her senior.
This of course made the rejected
suitors furious, inasmuch as they fully
believed that Clarkson had played some
sort of game" to curry favor.
ITO tell the truth, Blethen, I have
always thought you had the inside track
there" Masters said frankly, "but 1
did not mean to yield I'LL I had to; any
way 1 fancied she almost disliked
Clarkson.
Rolf shook his head gloomily, it was
matter that he could not talk about.
His love for Pansy Moore was some
thing more than a boyish passion, it
was his very life. In his eyes she had
been almost perfection, her one falling
being a propensity to firt; but then she
was so young, gay and pretty, and such
belle.
He had thought that she secretly
favored him.
In less than fortnight after their
dismissal, Paul Masters was found one
morning lying beside the railroad track
with bullet hole in his BRAIN A few
feet away an ivory handled pocket
knife with Rolls name inscribed on the
handle, was found.
1t had been Christmas gift from
Masters himself only the winter before.
Somebody-and finally dozen peo-
ple-remembered seeing the young men
walking together in that direction just
before dark. OF course Blethen was
arrested at once, and when his room,
over his uncle's carriage shop, was
searched, several articles spattered
with blood and dust were found.
Clarkson, too, remembered of having
heard them in loud, angry converse
ton several times of late; and somehow
the rumor spread that they had been
wont to quarrel over their rivalry in re-
gard to Pansy Moore.
Rolls uncle-who was a hard, mar
row-minded man-was one of the first
to fcrsake him, probably to insure
against any appeal from the youth for
bail or help. But he need not have
feared. Rolf asked no one for bail.
L am innocent of this crime" he
protested. why, Paul Masters was
my dearest friend"
SO much the worse" cried the ex-
cited populace.
Clarkson offered to 60 his bail, but
Rolf refused him, and awaited his trial
in the county Jail.
The result of the trial we already
know. 1t seemed to Ralf that all the
faces that had smiled on him for the
last three years united in one great
leer.
The majority believed him guilty and
the verdict was guilty" so what mat
tered it what the minority
thought, or whether he really was
or not?
After searching the sea of faces for
one and not finding it, he sat in quiet,
indifferent hopelessness till the end.
She, Of course, believed him guilty,
and had gone with the rest. Clarkson
alone seemed to really stand by him,
and gave his testimony against him
grudgingly. But he can afford to-"
thought Ralf bitterly.
He had not looked on Pansy Moore's
face again until this Easter morn in the
prison chapel. No wonder he was as
tonished at his dream and this message
on the card; no wonder that he wept.
A year passed and he had known no
other ray of light, but he had never
grown quite hopeless again.
Wretched, miserable he was, but
there was ever the remembrance of the
dream, and that little card, soiled and
broken by continual handling and ca
ressing, but still bearing the magic in
scription.
Again they sat in chapel, again the
wheezy old organ ratified off under the
unskillful touch of the warden's
daughters fingers; but Ralf Blethen
was wide awake and watchful. All
the year he had hoped that she
would come again, hard as it really was
for him to be treated as criminal by
the only woman he loved, and she the
affianced, probably the wife ere this, of
another. She did not come, however,
and at the end of another year Ralf
Blethen had settled down to utter de-
spair and bitterness.
His doggedness made him unpopular
even with his companions, but he did