The Child of Waterloo, or, The Horrors of the Battle-Field — page 115: what you’re looking at

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

112 THE CHILD OF WATERLOO. ing yourself to be too much led away by your feelings of intense anxiety.” ‘* Do not doubt me for one moment. The stake I have at issue in this matter will teach me prudence. Do not doubt me, brother.” ‘‘You shall start at daybreak, be assured; and now Jet me have the intervening time to myself, and with it, likewise, the assurance that you are making, at least, the attempt to procure some necessary repose before starting on your expedi- tion.” | ‘‘The first part of your request, brother, I can easily com- ply with, and I will leave you; as for the second, I fear anxiety of mind will now place it quite out of my power, unless when the bodily energies shall happen to be completely exhausted by fatigue.” Captain Morton felt fully the truth of what Henry said, but he made no reply to it; and Henry left the room to proceed to his own chamber, without the slightest idea of being able to sleep. He busied himself in making a few simple preparations for leaving the Hall, and, with a heavy heart, he told himself that it might be a long and weary time before he again looked upon that home which to him had been one possessing so many charms while Mabel was an inmate of it, but which now, alas! with her absence, seemed to have lost all its charms. ‘My beautiful Mabel,” he exclaimed, as, after having com- pleted the few preparations he intended to make, he cast him- self upon achair, with aJong-drawn sigh—‘“‘ my beautiful Mabel, I dread to think of what may be your fate, and yet imagination will be busy on that fearful su ject. Oh, if but one ruffian hand be raised in unkindness against you, let him who aims it rue the day and hour he so raised it. I will exact a terrible retribution.- Surely, with such perseverance and indomitable energy as I shall bring to the task, I shall be able to discover where she is concealed.” In the meantime, the captain went to the chamber of his wife, whose indisposition had now become a new source of painful anxiety to him. He was much relieved to find that she was greatly recovered, and to be assured by her that nothing now remained of the sudden faintness which had been induced by the mental shock she had received from the by far too probable supposition that poor Mabel was in the hands of the murderer of the young traveler at the inn. *“T am well in health, Morton,” she said, ‘‘ quite well, except so far as the mind sympathizes with the body; but I still cannot help feeling, with all the force of conviction, and clinging to it, that poor Mabel is in the power of that dreadful man.” “IT cannot,” said Captain Morton, “although I fain would, deny that such is my own impression. We now know the worst, and we have but to arm ourselves with resolution to meet it, as well as take what eteps we may to avert any of its comicbooks. com