The Prairie Detective: Secret Service Series No. 24 — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

46 THE PRAIRIE DETECTIVE. CHAPTER V. TRAITORS IN CAMP. As soon as Dan and Posey had left Doc Harper’s hut, silence fell upon the group. The sisters stood in the open door-way gazing after the men who had gone, while their father, with eyes fixed on the ground and hands folded, seemed trying to read an answer to some deep and perplexing problem. After some moments spent thus, the girls fell into conversation, the subject, naturally enough, being the two persons who were nearly out of sight down the main street. “What a strange looking man,’’ said Esther, in an abstracted way. ‘Which of them, sister?’? was the questioning re- sponse of Marian. Her sister turned with a merry twinkle in her eye. “Why, both of them, for that matter. But you need not be jealous, because I was not then referring to the personal appearance of Posey Ryan.” Marian colored up to the roots of her hair, but said nothing in reply to the sly thrust her sister had ad- ministered. “No,” continued Esther; ‘“‘I meant the stranger— sycamore Dan, I believe they called him. Did you notice what strange manners he has?”’ “TI did not see so much in his manner as I did in his eyes. Why, sister, they are wonderful. When he looked at me he appeared to read every thought in my heart. I never felt so strangely in my life.” cComicbooks co m