Commodore Junk — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

54 COMMODORE JUNK. Mary excitedly caught at the letter the boy handed to her, and opening it with trembling hands, managed with no little difficulty to spell out its contents. They were very short and laboriously written in a large schoolboy-like hand for her special benefit by one who kuew her deficiencies of education. “Tt 1s not too late yet. Abel will be tried to-morrow and condemned unless a prece of sea-weed is received to-night.” ** And I used to love him and believe in him!” she cried at last passionately, as her hot indignation at last mastered her, and she tore the letter in pieces with her teeth, spat the fragments upon the ground, and stamped upon them with every mark of contempt and disgust. Then a change came over her, and she sank sobbing upon a stool, to burst forth into a piteous wail. “Qh, Abel !—brother |—it is all my doing. I have sent |»? you to your death CHAPTER X. A DARING TRICK. THE laws were tremendously stringent in those days when it was considered much easier to bring an offender’s bad career to an end than to keep him at the nation’s expense ; and when the stealing of a sheep was considered a crime to be punished with death, an attack upon the sacred person of one of the king’s officers by a couple of notorious law-breakers was not likely to be looked upon leniently by a judge well known for stern sentences, Comcooolkks.c©