José — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

54 JOSE. plain. No sounds were audible save an occasional whinny from the corral, and the faint, lugubrious howl of a prairie-wolf in the distance. The young man examined his time-piece by the lght of a match. It was nearly twelve o’clock, and Green still absent. He slowly arose and descended from the wagon, to search for him. At that instant he was called to take his turn as a guard, and a few minutes later was standing on the outskirts of the camp, rifle in hand, alone in the awful silence of the prairie-night. The stars gleamed with a radiance brighter than he had ever beheld, and he was soon able to distinguish his near surroundings. ‘When in the darkness of the night, I stand alone,” was the refrain that involuntarily crossed his mind; ‘‘My thoughts turn to my distant love,” and before he was fully conscious of it, his Vicks- burg adventure was again, vividly as ever, before him. He lived it all over again, with all the strange sentiments it had inspired in him at the time. Again he was reading her last farewell note, a recollection that extended even to the character of her writing, and when he came to the place where she stated, “Since, according to all human reckon- ing we shall never meet again,” he experienced a longing so wildly impulsive that, startled by the sudden violence of his own emotions, which he had long deemed subjugated, he strengthened himself with a forcible effort, and sighed heavily. At the moment in which he swept his glance fiercely over the plain, he noticed a suspicious agitation of the grass that could not be caused by the mind. Ad- vancing a step, he scrutinized the spot closely, but . Eomichookssco