The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1897-02-16
PA RT II


The next morning he was mp early
deliberately up early-but, alsa Miss
Lowell and her friend were mp earlier,
and had gone out-"for the day"
madame believed.
Rayburn strolled about the town in
the vague hope of running across them
somewhere; but they were not at the
cathedral nor at the Church of Notre
Dame-du-Port, nor at'any of the other
points of interest where it was their
duty to be.
AS for himself, he could hardly have
imagined his being entirely unim-
pressed by the building wherein Pope
Urban held the council that proclaimed
the first crusade yet such was the
painful fact; and his following days
were spent in excursions to Royat, to
the ruined towers of ont-Rognon and
to the great plateau of Gergovia. where
Caesar received his famous defeat at
the hands of NercingetoriX; excursions
that were signaized by an entirely uni
form bad fortune as to company, and
by an entirely uniform lack of interest
or impressions. At one point he got
scraps of intelligence to the effect that
two foreign young ladies had been at
the spot the day before; at others, nav
ing floundered out of the depths in
French, he was, as consequence, sent
on Wild-goOse Chases across the COun
try--perhaps to find nothing, perhaps
to find the chase materialized into
brace of unsavory peasantesses. In
the hotel it was the same or worse. His
existence was absolutely ignored, pre-
csely as was that of the French
guests
At first Rayburn had been supremely
disappointed and upset by his lack of
progress but, later, he began to drift
back into a normal condition. If two
young women chose to be so confound-
edly distant under circumstances where
the most conventional might be eX-
pected to relax just trihe toward one
whom they must know to be fellow
countryman and a gentleman, it meant
one of three things. Either they didn't
like his looks, or they hadn't sense
enough to know when they could afford
to be cordial, or they were too indie
pendent and "new" to be of any earth
ly use to a rational man. He did not
like to come to the first of these con-
clusons, and what he had seen and
heard hardly warranted either of the
others. but it was quite evident that
he was at social standstill and some
theory was necessary to restore. his
mental equilibrium. They evidently
didn't want to know him. Well, they
needn't, and that settled it.
Luckily for RaYburn, he was blessed
with one of those minds that can live
up to a philosophy once determined
upon. His desertiOn of law for leisure
showed as much and therefore, when
he arose the following morning, it was
with hardly a thought of the unap-
proachable Miss Lowell or the inde-
pendent Miss Hodges and with a very
lively interest in a walk he had planned
for that day and the neXt--a visit to
the summit of the Puy de Dome and
the ruins of the temple of Mercury, that
SurmOunt it.
His expectations We're not unre-
allied, for, by the time the summit was
reached, the sharp cold of the atmos-
phere, the magnificent panorama, and
the joy of rummaging amid the ruins
OF a building whereof Caesar wrote,
ali united to Danish dreams of unap-
preciatiVe femininity, and, when he re-
tired to rest that night in the guest
chamber of the observatory, he heartily
congratulated himself that he was once
more a free man.
1t was noon of the following day He
had hestated for awhile as to whether
to descend by the roundabout path
he had climbed, or whether to strike
straight down by a steep but practic-
able way that would cut off about three
miles and meet the Clermont- FerranC
road we'll to the westward A decision
had scarcely been made in favor of the
longer route, and so made be it said
in a measure because it was the longer
when he became aware that he was MOI
alone on the plateau. a little above
and among the ruins he described two