The Child of Waterloo, or, The Horrors of the Battle-Field — page 81: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

%8 THE CHILD OF WATERLOO. it’s a trouble to live, and I wouldn't mind dying but for the trou- ble of that.” There could be no doubt in the world from whom these words proceeded. Troubled Tom, of course, gave utterance to them, and as Jem now paused he was soon by his side. ‘‘ Why, Tom,” said Jem. ‘it’s an odd thing to see you up and stirring at such an hour as this.” ‘Oh, you may say that; it’s a dreadful trouble and no mis- take; but somehow or another nobody would let anybody rest anywhere. J tried to go to sleep last night in Toggs’s pigstye, and just as I got comfortably off, somebody come and treads slap on my stomach. There’s a trouble.” ‘*Oh,” said Jem, ‘‘and a very good thing they did, too, for it put suspicion into the right channel, and cleared me of the false charge of murdering the gentleman at the inn.” ‘*Oh, did it? It’s a very great trouble for all that, though. Well, to-day, Jem, you know, I turns the matter over in my own mind, and, after a good deal of trouble, I recollected the churchyard was called the place of rest, and was sacred to ever so many peopres repose, and so there I went, and down I lay, as comfortable as possible, atween Mrs. Meggs and Squire Mut- tons’s family graves. ‘She sleeps in peace,’ was on one blessed tombstone, and ‘Lightly tread the hallowed ground,’ was on the other. I just got comfortably off when whack somebody comes, and blessed if I don’t think I was smashed, and away they goes again like a bum-shell; but, in course, I was waked up— there’s the trouble. But there’s no peace anywhere, not even in the blessed churchyard, where I thought nobody would have interfered with me.” T a Certainly one would have imagined you were safe there, om. ‘* Ah, to be sure.” ‘‘But Iam glad you were not, because it convinces me that he whom I have seen was no creature of the imagination, but a being of flesh and blood like ourselves.” ‘‘ ‘Yes; and bones too,” groaned Tom. “‘Bones ?” ‘*Ah, to be sure. Flesh and blood only could never have gived me that dig in the stomach asI had. There was lots 0’ bones, too, you may depend, or else I shouldn’t have had it. I feels it now. Lotso’ trouble. Dollops o’ inconwenience.” Despite his mind being,so seriously full of those events which had placed him in so strange and anomalous a position, Jem could not forbear laughing. ‘‘ Well, Tom,” he said, ‘‘ by some strange chance you seem to be always at hand to confirm something that I want confirmed. It has been jeeringly said to me that what I have to tell of my adventures in the church to-night would not be believed because my own word only could be given in support of the narration.” ‘*Lor! adventures in a church” “Yes. Strange ones, too.” ** Much trouble ?” ‘TI did not think of that,” comicbooks. com