The Child of Waterloo, or, The Horrors of the Battle-Field — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

THE CHILD OF WATERLOO. 5 flict, to meet it by the hand of a murderess, without even the small consolation of a struggle. Now she paused at a body which lay not many paces from him, and he saw her lift up one of the hands of the dead man, upon which he supposed there was a ring, for he could perceive that she was shaving away with her knife at one of ‘the fingers, as if it had been a piece of wood that it was necessary for some purpose to sharpen to a point. Alt the while, too, she kept muttering to herself upon some indifferent topic, and when she ha: got the ring off, he saw her give ita hasty wipe, to get rid of the blood and pieces of man- gled flesh that hung to it, and then drop it into the capacious sack, which was the receptacle of her plunder. “Surely,” thought the young English officer, “‘ the French- man who spoke is dead—happy, happy death!” Nearer, nearer still came the woman, she was close to him, and as she flung the sack beside him, he heard the jingle of its multifarious contents. She began humming the fragments of some song, while she lifted up first one of his hands, then the other, to see if there were rings. He wore none, and with an oath at her disappointment, she tore open his vest, which was soaked with blood, and laid hold of a gold chain he wore, There was a difficulty in getting it, so she took a grasp of a handful of his hair, and jerked up his head, while she took it off him. Something, then, seemed suddenly to strike her that he yet lived, and she placed her great brawny hand upon his heart. She felt its faint pulsation, and a chuckle came from her lips. The knife was immediately produced, and stooping over him, she raised it the whole length of her arm above her head to give force to the blow. Oh what a moment of agony was that! Intense dread burst the fetters that bound his tongue, and, in a voice that might have been heard over half the extent of that battle-field, he shouted ,— “‘ Coming, sir,” cried the welcome voice of Rafferty, and in an instant such a tremendous eper took place close to his ear, that he was nearly stunned with the concussion. Rafferty had got hold of a musket by some means, and having leveled it over the dead horse, he fired right into the face of the woman. ‘* Take that, my jewel!” hecried, ‘Our side forever and a day. Hurrah! hurrah! What a darlint you are, to be shure, anyhow. Fair and aisy goes a mighty long way, sir. And so you ain’t dead yet. It’s a shocking thing, it is, sir, to have to blow off the blessed head of one of the fair sex, sir,” CHAPTER II. So stunning, so close to his very face, and so utterly unex- poded, was the report of the musket which had been fired by erty Brolickbones, that the young officer for the moment comicbooks. com