Octavia's Pride; or, The Missing Witness — page 204: what you’re looking at

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

BE LN K ¢ 194 OOTAVIA’S PRIDE much afraid as of Mathew Merle, detected me, and cut off my only hope. One day a singular looking person passed through the corridor, which was a sort of promenade for the boarders. My room had a little glass pane in the top of the door, and from my dreary perch in the high-barred windows I could look through. I noticed him, the first time he came, in a listless fashion; but next my attention was drawn by seeing the landlady point me out, and allow . him to look at me through the glass door. A strange im- pulse made me burst forth in a wild appeal for help. I said I was dying by inches, growing mad with misery. I de- _clared a lonely desert, a trackless ocean, was preferable to the lite I led. «The stranger listened attentively, and it almost seemed to me the landlady’s hard heart was melted; for, after the man in the long coat and the bushy whiskers had left, she came to my room and sat down and talked with me. She asked me what I had done to anger my uncle. I told her nothing, except that I would not marry his son. She said she was sorry for me, but she was a poor, woman, and could not help me. It struck me as odd that when she said it she © put her hand in her pocket, and I heard the chinking of coin. I tried my best to conciliate her, hoping to escape through her help; and, though I did not care for it, I drank a cup of coffee she brought me just after Mathew Merle si paid me his usual afternoon visit. ‘Oh, sir, you will believe me, will you not, when | tell you that I knew nothing more from that moment until I woke, far out to sea, on board the ship Sea Foam. I was there, dressed in these clothes, with gold in my pocket, and a trunk filled with boy’s clothing, but not a vestige of my old life left me except my Bible, and that had been muti- lated, for the blank pages and every scrap of writing had been cut out. Even the precious locket I had secretly worn around my neck was gone. ‘This letter was in my. pocket. pe - comicbooks.com_