The Secret Shot; Or, The Rivals Of Misty Mount — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

American Tales No, 8,---The People’s Ten Cent Series, THE HERMIT OF THE COLORADO HILLS. A STORY OF THE TEXAN PAMPAS. BY W. H BUSHNELL. Tis is a peculiar but very striking story of the Texan Pampas. It introduces us to the wild life of the plains, to the great cattle droves of the herdsmen, to the savage Comanche Indians, and to the strange being, the Hermit of the Hills | —a character not altogether fictitious. There is also in the story, as a leading _ feature, the element of female interest. One novel scene leads us on to another without pause. There is something so original in the sketch of Inez, at night, in her fairy boat on the lagoon, that we can not avoid calling attention to it. The wild lights and grotesque figures of the slaves, hunting by fire and torch- light—herself and her huge, sable attendant, in the nautilus-shell shallop, lost in the dangerous lagoon, where the fatal beauty of the million overhanging flowers and clinging vines but spoke the presence of monstrous alligators and poisonous serpents—the alarm—the cry for help—the sturdy devotion of the slaves who risked their lives to save ‘that of their young mistress—all this is powerfully told. Yet it serves only to introduce us to the still more harrowing perils and exciting scenes which follow, when Inez is lost on the mountains. AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY, Publishers’ Agents, 191 HASSAU STREET, New York, COMmmicooolkks (C@) i