At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 189: what you’re looking at

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

= 178 "AT A GIRL’S MERCY. nurse of the battle-field, should be more in his power than she ever could be under the care of those who loved her in the quiet old town among her flowers in the old Hall garden. He would prove it and hold it true. He trod many a full blossomed clover under his feet as he walked the southern slope that day, and the men under him felt the power of his wrath as they had felt it many a time before, though never with so constant a pressure. His horse was stung with madness at the sharp lash upon his flanks when his master rode through the town that afternoon. His dog cowed under the blow of his foot as he fol- lowed at his heels with canine affection. It was a cruel day for every one and everything in Howard Blake’s power, and even Nan, so many miles away, would feel it presently. Not for herself at first it might be, but the blow would fall upon her by and by in worse than a selfish touch. She would know the sorrow upon those she loved, and be unable to help them even by her presence, and she would real- ize that the serpent had indeed entered her Eden, where the innocence and happiness of childhood were giving place to the sadness and the bitterness and the knowledge of evil that were coraing to her with her grace of womanhood. Told as Hilda told it in her letter to her sister, the cruel blow in the dark at the squire through the madness of the rabble from the ranks of the rioters, seeking to destroy the grand old Hall, and the master with it, touching with their coward torch the very heart of the squire’s pride at a whisper from the man who would lower every vestige of this pride, and lower the proud spirit of the daughter who had spent her life among the shadows and the sunbeams there, they struck with the cowardice and wild fury of revenge, and they were disappointed; but they were not dis- couraged with such a hidden leader working for them in the darkness of secrecy. For they had never gained a glimpse of the man who was helping them on in their vengeance, not gained a clew of whom it might be. But they worked in the blind madness that characterizes such brutes, and they might have won that night but for the discovery of “comicbooks > a san’ 2 Y,! 4 ae) € Fo 7 , 4