Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-05-04
CHAPTER W.
AT THE MERToNs'.

fields lay scorched and sere, while white coating of dust covered every thing by the roadside. Even the leaves of the trees, motionless in the ,sultry air, seemed burnt and lifeless. Overhead hung a blazing sun. As they plodded forward, the horses be- ing unable to move faster than walk, owing to the heavy load, clouds of dust rose about them. The very atmosphere was permeated with floating particles, and the distance was blurred and vague.
 For nine miles the road ascended gradually, part of the time following the course of the abandoned Susque- mango canal, part of the time in close proximity to the track of the Sus- wego and Eastern railway. There was little conversation. Occasionally ,one of the young men near the driv- ,er's seat was heard to berate the heat in a subdued, hopeless fashion, and there was a rare interchange sof chaff between these same young men and lone yokel shouting from "a farm-yard by the highway. Once tor twice pugnacious sheperd dog { rushed out and parked at them, but no one gave heed to the implied chal- slenge.
 It was nearing five o'clock when they reached the shady park at Him. tonville. Very familiar this spot looked to Rossiter, for it was at the institution situated upon the lofty hill mile and a half from the pretty little town that he had spent the four years of his college life. There was the church in which he had once taken part in prize contest before an audience made up chiefly of beam ing and fiuttering maidens and their escorts. How very far away it all seemed! Quite like another existence. And he was coming back to the scene in hop-wagon! It was not much as he had pictured his return when he had fingered one night in the moonlight by yonder fountain Jew weeks before his graduation. He glanced about as they passed up the residence side of the park, thinking he might recognize some of the townsfolk, for he had known quite a number of the citizens when he was in college, but there were few to be seen, and among them he distinguished no one whose figure he remembered. Beyond the trees and the strip of greensward, bag gage-man was driving at an ambling gait in the direction of the station, but it was not the eccentric little Irishman, Barney" who had been wont to deliver his trunk in the old days at the top of three flights of stairs with so many remarkable ex- pletives. A feeling of disappointment and loneliness seized upon Rossiter, a sense of being apart and aloof from the rest of the world. This was the one place of all places where he had felt that there was sure to be some one to greet him cheerfully should he ever return, yet he beheld no one who stood out clear in is memory. Doubtless there wer those whom he would know and who might recall him, but they were not in evidence, and he had ex- pected that they would be.
 Joe Becraft noticed the dejection in his face, and, misunderstanding the cause of it, appealed to his mother to know if she had not said that their journeys end was but a short distance beyond Hintonville.
 t'WeIl, it ain't an awful sight furth- er," she answered, "but it's mostly hill.''
 Mrs. Becraft had been yielding a large, loosely jointed fan energeti- cally for most of the nine miles they had traversed, and was we'll nigh in a state of collapse. little Till of precipitation was making it's way down her rounded face just in front of each ear. There was ring of heat about both of her eyes, and yet she did not complain"
 ''You look about done up, Ma,' ,' said her elder son, transferring his attention frcm Rossiter.
 She smiled at him resignedly.
 "I don't knows I'd care to go OF many more miles like this," she said 'sI guess we'll all be glad to get there"
 Some of the young men were an xious to pause for a drink of beer but the driver informed them that if they did so they would have tc follow on foot, as he should not wait consequently no one quilted the wa gon. As they left Hintonville behind the ground began to rise in long slope, for instead of pursuing their way along the valley in which the town nestled they bore to the left towards lofty range of hills. The sun was slowly westering, and be yond the breeding vale where the winding Oskenonto flowed, on the crown of the first abrupt rise Ros sitter saw the slanting rays ldndle te golden fire the spire and vane of the old college chapel. At the sight o1 the shifting wind-indicator one of his student pranks flashed into his mind 8 thing that had dropped from hil memory for years-how in the lazy spring afternoons he used to place { chair in the deep window of his bed room and. having lowered the unDe'