Alice Wilde: The Raftsman's Daughter — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

§2 ALICE WILDE. mark of Cain was secretly branded upon the swarthy brow which once could have flashed back honest mirth upon them. They say “the devil is not so black as he is painted ;” and surely Ben Perkins was not so utterly depraved as might be thought. He was a heathen; one of those white heathen, found plentifully in this Chistian country, not only in the back streets of cities, but in ‘the back depths of sparsely-settled countries. He had grown up without the knowledge of religion, as it is taught, except an occasional half-understood sensation ser- mon from some travelling missionary—he had never been made to comprehend the beauty of the precepts of Christ—and he had no education which would teach him self-control and the noble principle of self-government. . Unschooled, with a high temper and fiery passions, generous and kindly, with a pride of character which would have been fine had it been enlight- ened, but which degenerated to envy and jealousy of his superiors in this ignorant boy-nature—the good and the bad grew rankly together. From the day upon which he “ hired out,” a youth of eighteen, to Captain Wilde, and saw Alice Wilde, a child of swaive, looking shyly up at him through her golden curls, he had loved her. He had worked late and early, striven to please his employer, shown himself hardy, courageous, and trustworthy—had done extra-jobs that he might accumulate a little sum to invest in property—all in the hope of some time daring to ask her to marry him. Her superior refinement, her innate delicacy, her sweet beauty were felt by him only to make him love her the more desperately. As the sun fills the ether with warmth and light, so she filled his soul. It was not strange that he was infuriated by the sight of another man stepping in and winning so easily what he had striven for so long—he saw inevitably that Alice would love Philip Moore—this perfumed and elegant stranger, with his fine language, his fine clothes, and his fine manners. He conceived a deadly hate for him. All that was wicked in him grew, choking down every thing good. - He allowed himself to brood over his wrongs, as he regarded them; growing sullen, imprudent, revengeful. Then the piponiunity came, and he fell beneath the temptation. Chance had saved him from the consummation of the deed, cComicbdooks.com