Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

BONNY JEAN. 9 She hung about his neck, sobbing as though her heart would break. | ‘It’s in the—paper, darlin’,” he faltered, brokenly ; ‘‘ Gabriel Black has it. You'll do as I—tell you in that paper, dearie?” ‘<T will, father,” she sobbed. ««Swar it, Jean.” | ‘* 1 swear it,” she responded, solemnly. A look of content stole over the old man’s face. It was get- ting dark in the cabin, but dark and light were both alike to him now. | ‘‘Good-by, good-by,” he whispered, faintly; and ere they scarcely realized it he was gone—gone to that ‘‘ upper country,” where there is no pain or sorrow, never any more. As soon as the weeping women had been led away from the cabin, and naught remained save the rigid form, which lay there with its white face upturned and ghastly, forth from behind the bed—where he had lurked all this time, his presence undreamed of, serpent that he was—crawled Gabriel Black. His eyes shone with a fiendish delight, and he langhed aloud as he clutched the signed paper. : ‘‘ The game is in my own hands,” hechuckled ; ‘‘and now, Philip Randall, it lies between you and me—betwixt man and man. You'd better look out for yourself, my friend.” He sneaked away through the coming gloom, and the shades of twilight hid him. And night descended. Darknesscrept onapace. The hoot- owl startled the echo with its frightful shriek ; the frogs were croaking in a doleful concert ; an occasional night bird flew past the old cabin like a thing of ill-omen; the crickets chirped in the grass, and the placid Tangipahoa flowed onward between its broad, green banks down to Lake Pontchartrain. And in that sylvan spot a deed of darkness was plotted that night—a deed that would curdle the blood in one’s veins. Yet here nature claimed dominion, and the pure, blue sky, spread out with its myriad stars—God's lamps all alight—shone above =) Eomichbooks:co