Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1903-10-02
ONE BOX OF HOPS.
RICHARD E. MERTON.

This the carpenter, with much evil
dent satisfaction, slipped into one
of the pockets of his vest. By II
o'clock Rossiter also had the pleasure
of pocketing one of those little tick
cts, and he began wondering how
many he should be able to accumu-
late during his tarry at the Mertons'.
The afternoon picking had been
but a short time in progress when
Rossiter noticed two farm hands
crossing the road carrying hop-box
arranged for two pickers. This was
placed a few rows in advance of his
own. Erelong he saw two girls
emerge from the house and come to-
wards the hop-feld. A glance told
him that they were not ordinary fire.
quenters of the hop harvest, and then
it flashed into his mind that they
were the young ladies who had
passed Joe Becraft and himself the
evening before. AS they advanced
he had an excellent view of them,
from which they were approaching.
The one whose beauty he and Be-
craft had remarked upon was tall
and slight, and carried herself with
singular grace and charm. The
great hat which shaded her features
and was tied beneath her chin
showed her countenance as though
in a frame-the delicately arched
brows, the appealing eyes, the re-
fined and sensitive mouth. Her skin
was unnaturally pale, as though
from illness, yet she betrayed no fur
ther evidences of i1l-health, laughing
and chatting with the one who &C
companied her in an animated way.
The other girl-Rossiter judged that
both might be "a or 25-was much
shorter and plumper than her COM
panion: There were roses in her
checks, and while with some she
would hardly have passed as pretty,
there was about her a wholesome at
Effectiveness.
Rossiter was tempted to turn and
watch them, but restrained himself
from doing so. He CHANGED to look
towards the Becraft box and caught
Joe's eye. That young man gave a
little emphatic nod of his head which
told it's story of admiration
81 shall have to threaten to re-
Rossiter.
what can they be doing in the
hop-yard?" he unused.
His unspoken query was answered
an instant later by the carpenters
wife. who said to her husband:
Chats Miss Merton, the one with
the red cheeks, and the others a
Miss Densmore, a cousin of the Mer-
tons from Illica, who's come out to
pick for her health. I heard Mrs.
Merton tell some one SO last night"
During most of the afternoon the
face of Miss Merton's cousin was be-
fore Rossiter, although he did not
actually see her again till towards
the time for the picking to cease,
when she and Miss Merton passed
on their way to the house. It was
her eyes especially that haunted him
the searching tenderness in them.
That he should dwell upon her thus
was quite as ridiculous, he confessed
to himself, as was Becraft's display
of susceptibility. Rossiter had long
considered women, at least those of
the class with which he had once
associated, as having gone out of his
a year and a half before he had cut
loose from his kin and all social ties,
when, on learning that his fortune
had vanished, the girl to whom he had
given his heart had thrown him over,
he had regarded the sex from an iso-
lated standpoint. The love of beauty
in it's many forms which had been
born in him, and which no series of
experiences could eradicate, had
often, in his vagabondage, riyeted his
attention upon a lovely woman, but
he had always considered her from
the artists position. That, after
all this time, a face should SO take
hold upon him struck him with a
sense of the preposterous, he who
had sunk to the level of the veriest
dregs of humanity-a common tramp.
He was inclined to shout aloud with
mirth.
Two days before he would have
sworn that such a thing was beyond
the bounds of possibility, but even
in the life of vagrant two days
may work strange things. The mo-
ment his feet touched the ground at
Illica the change began, and Rossiter,
regarding himself impersonally, be-
gan to wonder if he were actually
the same person who slowed him
self in the freight car at Clevalo not
a great many hours previous. Some
thing that he c0.ild not aualvzo waS