At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 124: what you’re looking at

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

AT A-GIRI’S MERCY. 113 \gave herself up bitterly to the thoughts that would come, that had crowded in upon her during the tire- some meal, during every minute of the last couple of hours of this dreadful evening. She had no one to — whom to go, and she longed more for sympathy then than she could ever do. Howard Blake would triumph over her trouble, and perhaps make it an end to gain his victory, that she knew, even when she wished the least to think of it, he was bending his whole nature to do. She would as soon ask the sympathy of a viper as of him. She hated him. She hated him with even more bitterness because he knew of her sore heart as she sat out at the gate that night waiting for her father. She knew that he had read her heart. He had offered her kindness, but she knew instinctively that it was the kindness of one ready to spring. If only she could go to her mother. If only she could have the ready motherly sympathy that had never before failed her. And yet she could not have her mother know of what danger her father wasin. Were she in her old state of health, she would keep from her the terrors of the | night. If she must bear it she would bear it alone. That was the only thing she could do. And where was her father all this time? He was at his post of duty, as his daughter was so assured he would be were it necessary. With the basement of a friend’s up-town residence as the rendezvous, he and others bent on the same good work of quelling the riot, and yet keeping posted as to its main points in order to send for more effective aid were that to be, spent the night in sleepless watchfulness, now out, now in, comparing notes, keeping the heart brave in the midst of the horrors that were on every hand, though everything was apparently quiet after comicbooks (E(@)