Old Specie, the Treasury Detective; or, The Harbor Lights of New York — page 185: what you’re looking at

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

OLD SPECIE. 177 The man at bay moves uneasily, and his hand trembles as it seeks his chin. ‘IT don’t know. Jam not sure,’’ he falters. “Ah! I thought as much. What did he tell you to do—how much to give?”’ ‘Hither ten drops or twenty—I could not say for the life of me.”’ “And you gave——”’ ‘“Twenty,’’ with a groan. “Exactly. What he told you, no doubt, was that ten was a dose and twenty a deadly one.”’ ‘No, no.”’ ‘“You wanted to be sure.’’ ‘I believed Amy would die in the tomb anyway, and I could not run the risk of her coming to while on the way there.’’ “That accounts for it.”’ ‘You went back after leaving Ben?”’ ‘*T did—in the morning.”’ “Tell me—when you opened the casket—did you find Amy alive?’ The man’s utterance has become thick now, and excitement causes him to tremble as with the ague, in spite of his self control. Much is at stake with him. He has lived for years as a gentleman, and always had the tastes of one, so that a public death on the gallows has more ter- rors for August Delmar than such a fate would have for an ordinary criminal. Not that he lacks grit—he has shown that on other occasions, but the sudden collapse of all his schemes seems to have utterly overwhelmed the man now. What I found in the casket was no living being,” says the detective, and Delmar fails to see there is a Eomicboo CS (eo)