Thrice Wedded, but Only Once a Wife — page 115: what you’re looking at

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

ee ~ = 106 THRICE WEDDED. you have harped upon so much?” demanded Ralph, with a sneer. His uncle winced beneath this quick retort, but replied confidently: ‘Why, you foolish boy, don’t you see that will be easy enough then. You will have no one to dispute your claim ~ but that puling boy, and what can he do, with no proofs, against such incontestable ones as you have?” “Then you mean for us to cage up the father for life, get possession of the property, and let my young rival go, and work or beg for his living?” Ralph said, in a manner which gave his uncle some encouragement to reveal the whole of his plan. “That is just what I mean, with one or two important alterations, which I will name,” he replied, jocosely. ‘‘I propose to cage him, as you call it, but not like his son, but rather in a wooden box, and six feet below or ound, and then let the young man go to Jericho if he wants to.” In other words, you would murder the man,” said Ralph, - in a husky voice, with a pale face and stern brow. “You've. hit it right this time, my boy ?” he answered, with a wicked leer. ‘And now what do you think of it?” Ralph involuntarily shuddered at such bold, out-spoken treachery, and he replied in a voice of intense loathing and horror: ‘I think you are a fiend, and I only wish you had left me to die in the land of strangers, where my mother died, in- stead of bringing me up for crimes like this. And I tell you I will never dip my hands in human blood.” “Really, young man, you are getting to be quite compli- mentary in your style of address,” sneered the heartless eae an angry glow suffusing his yellow and wrinkled ace. “I do but speak the truth, sir; and I would have you distinctly understand that I will never stain my soul with the crime of murder. And I begin to think that I have taken the wrong way after all to gain my honorable name that you tell so much about. You have inspired my heart~ with hatred—from my infancy, as it were—toward every legally born child, making me feel like an outcast anda - beggar. I believe if I had gone bravely and openly to him whom you say is my father, with the proofs in my hand, he might have been willing to recognize me equally with : comicbooks co