Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 273: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXII THE PREPARED PITFALL We must now pay another visit to Solomon Patch’s - public-house in Agar Town. It was between nine and ten o’clock in the evening, when Madge Somers, dressed in her usual gipsy-like style,— but looking more travel-soiled, weafy, and care-worn than she had ever yet appeared, — dragged herself painfully into that den. She was evidently sinking with fatigue, and throwing herself upon a seat in the open space fronting the bar, she bade Solomon at once serve her with some liquor. | ‘You seem ul, or else very tired,’’ observed the old man, as he presented her with a foaming pint of porter. ‘‘ There! take that, and if it doesn’t cheer you up a bit, then my name isn’t what it be.’’ The woman placed the pint measure to her lips, and did not remove it till she had poured the whole of its contents down her throat. Then, as she handed back the vessel to Solomon Patch, she said, ‘‘ Yes, I am indeed tired. I have walked many weary miles to-day, but was resolved to reach your place to-night. Let me see, what is the day of the month? ”’ ‘Well, now, what be it?” asked the old man, turning ~ toward his wife. ‘‘ Why, the tenth of August, to be sure.’ ‘““ Yes, the tenth,’ repeated Madge Somers. Then, in an undertone to herself, she said, ‘‘ It was the twenty-first of July the appointment was made: in one month, day for day, and hour for hour, was I to meet him at his own house. That will be on the twenty-first instant at nine o’clock in the evening. Twenty days have elapsed, and I am no wiser than I was; I have eleven more days to find out what I want.” 256 Gomicbooks (E(0)