At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 36: what you’re looking at

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

AT A GIRL’S MERCY. | 25 with such, who will have to learn their places and their rights at the point of the bayonet or from the leaden bullet of our arms.’’ “Is it so bad as that, papa?” ‘So bad, and even worse,”’ replied the squire, with deepening lines on his face. ‘So bad, little girl, that one’s life isn’t safe in the city for a day.” “Oh,” the girl said, “papa, if I were a man to enter the army and help toward bringing the peace! They told us we should have peace at the end of a few months at the most, and here the war has been going on for months already, and we seem no nearer the end than at the beginning.’’ “We must fight it out, little girl,’’ the squire said, with a sad smile, the first on his face that day. ‘‘And if I were not crippled with this rheumatic leg of mine, it wouldn’t take me long to enter the lists with the youngest of them. And not only that, but here [am crippled to a certain extent by this rob- bery, that not only deprives me of the amount I in- tended forwarding to the government, but also takes fifty-thousand dollars of what does not belong to me, but which I shall have to make good.’’ “But don’t you think, papa,’’ Nan said, a flash in her eyes, “‘that Mr. Blake will require no return of this money? How could he ask it, when he ran the risk on giving you the order to draw for him? And if he has a spark of patriotism—which, I beleve, I doubt—he must let this go when he knows how it will cripple you for aid to the army. Isn’t there something I can do—write a note to him and ask him to call upon you that you may talk it over with him? Are you sure everything is done, papa, that can be done? Are those detectives trustworthy? So many of them will do nothing but make a pretense Gomicboo cS (ele) m