At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

92 AT A GIRL’S MERCY. in the cords that bound them so securely and held the gag so firmly in place that not a sound could pass their lps. | Excepting rather severe stiffness from the uncom- fortable position and strain, the squire was all right after a few minutes, though almost speechless with indignation and apprehension as to the extent of their loss; but Mrs. Courtland did not recover so easily. The shock, together with the anxiety as to their daughter’s fate, threw her into a fever, and she lay tossing in delirium among the pillows, knowing no one, babbling incoherently, her thin face sunken more than even the worry about her boys had been able to do, her eyes bloodshot and partly-open, giving a ghastly look to the sweet old face. ‘Oh, this is worse than all the rest,’’ the girl said, her own face pallid from watching the flush and flickering of the faint life before her. ‘‘Oh, this is the worst, papa—so much the worst. Oh, mamma, oh, mamma, why is it you who must bear the worst of everything?”’ “You must come away, dear,’’ her father said, quietly placing his arm around her, and gently lead- ing her away from the bedside. ‘‘The physician will be here presently, and if Sarah should awaken your — face would but startle her. You have been through a trying ordeal, Nan, but you must not lose your self control now.”’ When the most of the excitement was over, the girl and her father sat alone in the library, the girl softly smoothing the gray hair from the squire’s temple—grown, oh, so much whiter, it seemed to her, in that terrible night. “If they had only spared his,’ he said, despair- \ ecomicbooks.co m i