At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

ATA GIRLS MERCY. 9 pected; all went to work as one man, silently, swiftly, surely; and ere the first streak of new- coming day had touched the east they were inside the house, the fastenings of the windows falling off like so much straw under their experienced hands and tools. Outside, the darkness had been dense enough, but in there, it was like the void before the world was made—no form, no shadow; nothing but a sold body of blackness that might hold danger or death for the men; but not one of them flinched, not one of them failed in the work laid out for him. Like so many shadows of a formless shadow, they moved across the room, feeling their way as though on familiar ground, yet to guard against any possible obstruction that might lay in the way. Half way across the room the leader stopped, and every man of them stopped also. But there was no danger; all was silent as the grave, silent as death, betraying nothing that lay beyond. A scratch of a match, like the report of a pistol in the silence, as the chief applied the match to the gas above his head, making the men visible to each other, a motley group, with masked faces, and ugly- looking weapons in their hands—hands that were quick to revenge an injury or a fancied slight. “This is your field,’ the chief said, with a low laugh of utter nonchalance, as he pointed to a heavy safe at the far end of the room. “The squire put his boodle there when he came from town yesterday. Afraid that the government would seize it for use in the war, but never expecting that another goy- ernment would make good his hold upon it. Well, you know the lay of the land as wellasI. Make no m Gomicbooks:.¢co