Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

28 BONNY JEAN. bed, and as his eyes fell upon that, his heart gave a sudden bound of horror, and stood still. The bed was made with a small, square canopy, or ‘‘ tester,” over head, from which a musquito bar usually depends ; and as Philip gazed he saw that the canopy was being moved by ma- _ chinery in the roof of the house, and was slowly but surely de- scending, and had he remained in the bed he would have been almost instantly suffocated, and-a dreadful death would have been his certain fate. _ Philip had read of such a horrible contrivance; but now he saw it all—saw by the faint, flickering light of the matches which he held in his hand—now burning fainter and dimmer, and at last expiring altogether and leaving him in total dark- ness. He knew that the fiends who had attempted his life would wait until they believed the success of their crime to be certain—until the terrible agonies of so awful a dissolution would be over, and Philip, a crushed and distorted corpse, would lie there upon the bed under that death-dealing canopy ; and then they would lift its ponderous weight by means of the same machinery, and gather around to rob his body, like vul- - tures around their prey. Oh ! was it not fearful? What should he do? How could he ever escape from that den of iniquity? Philip stood with both hands clasped, and stared straight before him through the darkness, CHAPTER V. THE NEXT STEP, «Steady, Flirt! Easy, now—over we go !” The speaker was a young girl—a dark, piquant brunette, with saucy black eyes, crimson cheeks, and pouting lips. | Her hair, of midnight blackness, hung in one long plait down her back, and was tied with a scarlet ribbon.. Her riding-habit, of black Eomichooks (e(@) =)