At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 127: what you’re looking at

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

116 AT A GIRL’S MERCY. were waiting for orders to enter in the fight, “They are hardly better than such, and have no human feeling. Why should they be treated with any con- sideration whatever? For what are we waiting, any- way ?’’ _ “They are brutes,’’ the officer acknowledged, his own blood rushing madly to enter active service, ‘‘but we must treat them as though they are men in- asmuch as they have to be ruled by strategy as well as the maddest onslaught of the army. We can subdue these rioters, but it is going to take time enough to make them see that we know how to maneuver as well as they. It is not brute force alone that will win!”’ The noise was deafening. The crowds yelled and swore, and filled the air with their foul breaths reek- ing with the fumes of the drinking that had given the failing courage to make this dash for liberty. It was as though pandemonium were let loose along the streets of the city, born of the country’s throes. It was a scene that beggared description. No pen could touch the depth of its horror, nor brush catch the lurid lights of this human mass surging against the city’s law. And poor little Nan, with her golden curls tossed upon her arm, and her tendes face clearly defined against the warm hue of the cushions, fell asleep in the silent old library like a tired child, a half smile on her parted lips, as though her dreaming were sweeter than her waking. For all her anxious pic- turing of what was going on in the city came no nearer the truth than could have come to one un- aware of the lowest depths of some of that city’s life. And there the butler found her when he went to close the house for the night, and stood beside her a m Gomicbooks.co