Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1904-06-09

| Lavender row was accustomed to
sensations, and would not have been
happy without them.
But never had the row been SO stir
red to its grim depths, so blown with
Aetoriety and unholy excitement, as
It was on the occasion of ALI Jarvis
sudden departure from 1t,
| One night In autumn, a night of
| shOstly mists and no moon, ALI failed
to come home. AS he was not man
OF regular habits. this was nothing
unusual, But Ia the morning his body
was found lying out on the NANCY
green stretch of the London Fields
dead, with a savage cash In the throat
that could not have been self-inaicted.
| While he lived, nobody had been
especially fond Of . ALT except his pa
rents, and they we're half afraid of
hinis A loafng; ill-conditioned ruffian,
| he had suffered Imprisonment for one
brutal outrage, and was strongly sus.
pected of others that could not be
brought home TO him.
Nevertheless, his death was general
ly accepted in Lavender row as d
calamity; he was discussed as ex-
haastively as if he had been a real
loss to the community, and men and
women reapeG glory in a small way by
retailing his sayings and doings and
posing as his personal friends.
| The police could find no clew to the
murderer, and, throughout this thrills
ing period; of all who rose to local
eminence by reason of their acquaint
ance with ALT, none rose higher than
Jenny Cripps, nor took subtler pride
in the elevation, ner appealed thence
more pfevailingly to public sentiment.
| Jenny lived with her mother in the
house opposite to that in which ALI
had lodged. She earned a livelihood
by work in a chocolate factory, and
was a good-looking, vivacious girl
who, for all her native coquetry and
love of dress and amusement had a
robust Imagination and a ballast of
common sense that stood her in good
stead in a. narrow, perilous world.
She had owned no preference for
anybody until she began to walk oui
with Ben Gillett, and Ben's triumph
was not lasting. She quarreled with
him frequently, and at length, Of
Tended by some fancied slight, sent
him away in a moment of pique and
apparently transferred her affections.
But Ben was not readily daunted.
He was a logged, steady-going fellow,
a capable artisan, dwelling at a dis
lance from the row, and had come to
know Jenny through meeting her at
intervals as she walked to and from
the chocolate factory.
He went away when she sent him;
but he returned and returned again
with a tireless persistence that was
presently rewarded she found she
could not care for his supplanter as
she had cared for him, so he was for
given and they were reconciled.
Then, after an interval, she broke
with him capriciously for a second
time, and he departed into the wilder
ness of her displeasure, smarting I'm
der the knowledge that he had a new
rival who was far more dangerous
than the old,
This new rival was nome other than
the redoubtabie ALT Jarvis:
Before his solitary conviction had
rendered the undue prominence too
risky, ALT had been the leader of a
gang of Hooligans who were the ter
ror of the neighborhood; and since his
release from durance he had been no
less daringly lawless, but carried out
his exploits with battling cunning
and secrecy that left the police no
chance of entrapping him.
1t was no wonder, then, if Jenny
was dazzled by the homage of so
masterful a man. The wonder was
4 that his dashing airs. the glamor of