Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1906-03-07
THE |
CRAFTERS
BY
FRAN CTS LYNDE
Copyright, 1904, by The Bobbs-Merriil Coz
CHAPTER ii.
A MAN OF THE PEOPLE.

A MAN OF THE PEOPLE.
Train Number Three, the Western
Flyer, was late, as Kent had predicted
just how late the operator could not
tell; and pending the chalking-up of
its arriving time on the bulletin board,
the two men sat on an empty baggage
truck and smoked in companionable 81
lence.
While they waited, Loring's thoughts
were busy with many things, friendly
solicitude for the exile serving as the
point of departure. He knew what q
handfast friend might know: how Kent
had finished his postgraduate course
in the law and had succeeded to his
fathers small practice in the New
Hampshire county town where he was
born and bred Also, he knew how
Kents friends, college friends who
knew his gifts and ability. had depre-
Gated the burial; and he himself had
been curious enough to pay Kent a
visit to spy out the reason why. On
their first evening together in the
stuffy little law office which had been
his fathers, Kent had made a clean
breast of it: there was a young wo-
man in the case, and promise passed
before Kent had gone to college She
was a farmers daughter, with no no.
ton for change of environment;
wherefore she had determined Kent's
career and the scene of it, laying its
lines in the narrow field of her own
choosing.
no
mental anchor had dragged until it
was hopelessly holding ground. The
young woman had laid the. blame at
the door of the university, had given
Kent bad half-year of fault-finding
and recrimination, and had finally
made an end of the matter by bestow-
ing her dowry of hillside acres on the
son of neighboring farmer.
Thereafter Kent had stagnated quiz
city, living with simple rigor the life
he had marked out for himself: thank
full at heart. Loring had suspected, for
the timely Intervention of the farmers
son, but holding himself well in hand
against a repetition of the sentiment
tai offense. All this until the opening
of the summer hotel at the foot of
Old Croydon, and the coming of Elinor
Brentwood
No one knew just how much Miss
Brentwood had to do with the long
delayed awakening of David Kent;
but in Lorings forecastings she en-
joyed the full benefit of the doubt
From tramping the hills alone, or
whipping the streams for brook trout,
David had taken to spending his after
moons with lover-like regularity at the
Croydon Inn: and at the end of the
season had electrified the sleepy home
town by declaring his intention to go
west and grow up with the country.
In Loring's setting-forth of the awak-
ening, the motive was not far to seek
Miss Brentwood was ambitious, and if
her interest in Kent had been only
casual she would not have been likely
to point him to the wider battlefield
Again, apart from his modest patri-
mony, Kent had only his profession
The Brentwoods were not rich, as
riches measured in millions: but they
lived in their own house in the Back
Bay wilderness, moved in Boston's
older substantial circle, and. in a world
where success, economic or other, is in
some sort the tombstone, were many
social planes above a country lawyer.
Loring knew Kent's fierce poverty
pride-none better. Hence, he was at
no loss to account for the exile's flight
afield, or for his unhopeful present at
titude. Meaning to win trophies to lay
at Miss Brentwood's feet. the present
stage of the rough joust with Fortune
found him endorsed, unweaponed and
rolling in the dust of the lists.
Loring chewed his cigar refiectively,
wishing his companion would open
the way to free speech on the subject
presumably nearest his heart. He had
a word of comfort. negative comfort
to offer, but 1t might not be said until
Kent should give him leave by taking