Laura Brayton — page 43: what you’re looking at

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

34 LAURA BRAYTON. in his walk, and looking up at the lighted window, said, in a low tone to himself: : “Laura is at last through the daily labor to which the sordid wretch, Enoch Sharp, dooms her—free to pass a few hours in rest that she may gather strength to renew her cheerless and monotonous life on the morning of another day. Why she en- dures it is both an agony and a mystery to me. Why, almost acknowledging by words, as well as by looks and actions, that she returns my love, she will not let me remove her from his power and in- fluence, I cannot tell. He has forbidden my visits to her. I have urged her to become my wife. ‘Never,’ she said, ‘will I become the wife of any man who is in a superior station of life until I can rise to the same social sphere. I feel my position, and I will rise above it before my fate is linked to that of another.’ She is pure and noble, beautiful | and true, and deserves more than I can ever do for her. The pride and wealth of my parents, their position in an aristocratic view, are her objec- tions to my desires—to a man like Enoch Sharp they should make my attentions desirable, but the deformed imp, fit only for the nether world, seems to view me with bitter hate. But I will thwart him and win her, even if it be long years before I succeed.” He now whistled a few clear notes of an old Scottish melody. As he did so, the dim outlines of the form which had been seen moving about the comicbooks