Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

BONNY JEAN. CHAPTER I. SWORN TO THE DEAD. The southern sun was slowly dying in the sky, passing away in royal state, down a pathway paved with gold, and with ban- ners of Tyrian purple, and rose, and amber all about. It shone in a mist of wondrous glory over the dense green pine woods, laving the river's breast with molten gold; it made its way through the thickest of forest trees upon the banks of the swift flowing Tangipahoa, and strayed in through the open door of a log-cabin, resting with caressing touch upon the silvery hair and white, worn features of the old man who lay upon his rude bed silent and alone. The lamp of life was burning low, and after long years of toil and hardship and strange adventure, old David Conway lay dying, and he knew that ere another sun should rise he would be gone. His had indeed been a rough and toilsome exist- ence, hewing a living out of the sturdy oaks and pines which grew so thickly in that portion of the South at the period upon which my story opens ; and many a shining dollar had he made with his industrious hands. But all that was over. He had struck his last blow ; the ax would never again be lifted by the strong hands, frail and weak now as a child’s; and soon the place that knew him would know him no more. Everything was very still within the cabin; no sound broke the silence, only the swift flow of the river as it swept by, and =) : Eomichooks (ee)