The Mission of Poubalov — page 189: what you’re looking at

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

AT ONE O'CLOCK A. M. 185 whom she knew only by his first name, ‘‘Mike,’? who had ‘been sent from the livery stable to take Ivan to the wed ing. He was an uncouth, illiterate young man, the most Holent contrast imaginable to her recent visitor, but also he most welcome, for there could be no manner of doubt s to his simple honesty. Clara found ita relief to talk with him apart from the fact that his message was one that stirred her with new hope and stimulated her weary brain to new plans for Ivan’s deliverance. i ‘*‘I was to say to ye,’’ said Mike, ‘Show I’d had me eyes an’ more, too, last night, on the feller what did the trick to me wheel.’’ ““Oh, indeed!’’ exclaimed Clara eagerly; ‘‘but what do you mean? Did somebody send you to tell me?”’ ‘*Yes’m, me boss. I told me boss about it, an’ he says you go to Miss Hilman with that, an’ tell her all about it, an’, says he, if it’s anything that can be useful to her you can do, do it, says he.”’ ‘You must thank him for me,” said Clara. ‘‘Now tell me, please, how and where you saw this man, and what he said. I won’t interrupt you.”’ “It’s not me as would like to tell you whné he said, miss. He wasn’t speakin’ to a lady, an’ I’m thinkin’ a lady wouldn’t ’a’ give him the cause to curse as I did.”’ Mike grinned in enjoyment of some retrospect that Clara thought she could imagine, and she smiled and waited pa- tiently for him to tell his story in his own way. ‘It was last evenin’, miss, at the corner of Dover an’ Washington streets. I was done with me work for the day, an’ was standin’ in a saloon by the bar, havin’ a drop of beer by myself, when this loafer came in. He stood alongside 0’ me an’ called for something, I don’t mind now what, for I was onto him, an’ was thinkin’ to meself would I thump him, or would I have an argyment. I was lookin’ straight at him, me hand on me beer glass, an’ I suppose he noticed me for that, for pretty soon he turns around an’ with a kind of a start, ‘Hello!’ says he. Ge in ‘Now I don’t know what would ’a’ happené’ if us