Mezzoni the Brigand — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

90 MEZZONI THE BRIGAND. carefully weighed before adopting it, hence his success with the robbers. Fearing the bare possibility of betrayal by some ~ unlucky means, he had kept his hazardous purpose a secret even from Colonel Bray, and that cable tele- oram was answered on the day it was received by a response that he would unavoidably be detained for a period of some weeks. He then wrote a letter to follow, giving some plausible excuse for his delay, which should be quite satisfactory to the family at home. His arrangements for the dangerous experiment which he had resolved to try, were soon perfected, and at once put in practice. Assuming the dilapidated dress of a sailor, and taking nothing with him except a couple of Ameri- can revolvers and a keen dirk-knife, he picked up incidentally such information as he could obtain, without betraying his design, and then dashed boldly into the mountains. Here he wandered on and on enduring for some days great hardship from hunger and want of rest, until one night he got upon a point overlooking the robbers’ cave to which his vision was directed by a moving light. He rightly conjectured that he had at last discovered the headquarters of the brigands. He marked the spot carefully, then approached as near as he thought to be safe, and secreting his pistols and knife, together with a small flask of brandy, which he had carefully preserved for special purposes, he lay down and slept until morning. | Then his wish was to be seized by the guard and brought into their quarters as a straggler, all of which had occurred as he designed. He had car- ried his ingenious plan to so nice an extreme as to comicbooks.com —