Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

, BONNY JEAN, 31 with graceful precision; and, with a low chirrup to’Flirt, the little witch was off like the wind. The young man followed her with his eyes as long as she was visible; then he removed his hat and passed one hand over his heated brow, his eyes twinkling with amusement, ‘‘She drives me wild!” he ejaculated. ‘‘Capricious little thing! But she will be my wife—I know it—I swear it !—just as Sure as yonder sun is in the sky above me! It’s worth wait- ing for.. By Jove! who’s that?” For two horses had come tearing through the woods just at the edge of the rice field. It was Mrs. Conway and Jean. They reined in their horses, and the young planter came forward to meet the ladies. He knew the Conways well, yet the recent sad occurrences at the timber camp had not yet reached his ears, Living several miles distant, the roads half the time impassable, this was not at all strange. So they repeated their sad story, and that they intended to seek present shelter at Mrs. Lee's. ‘<The best step you could take !” cried John Averill, cordially. ‘*They will assist you, Iam sure. Miss Adelaide passed here a few moments ago, bound for home.” They whipped up their horses, and hastened on, hoping to overtake her. , Hardly had the two ladies disappeared from sight, when a negro man crept out from a thicket of blackberry bushes on the roadside, and approaching young Averill, began to speak in a low, cautious tone, The young man listened eagerly, his cheek paling, and a strange light leaping into his handsome dark eyes. When the negro had finished what he had to tell, Averill leaped the rail fence ata single bound, and hastened away to the long, low, white house on the river-bank, which was his home, and where he was wont to announce that he ‘‘ kept bachelor’s hall.” Entering the house, he hurriedly changed his clothing, and mounting a horse which the negro had hastily Eomichbooks (ele)