Geoffrey's Victory by Mrs Georgie Sheldon — page 172: what you’re looking at

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

168 JACK’S STORY CONTINUED. they might be brought to. I rushed in, took the boy up, and laid him on the bed in the bedroom just off the kitchen. He moaned all the time, till I got a wet cloth and put if on his head, when he grew quiet and dropped off intoa stupor again. Then I went to her—my girl— Margery—the woman I’d sworn to love and take care of till I died, and who had done me nothin’ but kindness ever since we first met. “T lifted her up, but she hung limp and lifeless over my arm. I laid her head on my breast and begged her to come back to me, to call me her Jack once more, and say she’d forgive me, and I’d never lift my hand ag’in her ag’in, nor touch another drop as long as I lived. But *twan’t no use. She lay there quiet and peaceful enough, but there was that dreadful purple mark and cut on her forehead where it had hit the stove. She wa’n’t cold or stiffas I thought dead people always were, but there wa'’n't no sign of life about her either and I laid her down again, my heart a-breakin’, and feelin’ like another Cain, only worse, tor I’d killed a woman, and she my own wife! “Then I began to think what would happenif I was found there, and I grew frightened. I couldn’t make up my mind to stay and confess what I’d done, and hang like a dog for it, so I got together a few things and all the money that Margery had in her own little box, and the boy’s safe, and wrappin’ him in ashawl—for J daren’t leave him while there was a breath o’ life in him and a chance of savin’ him—I stole out of the house, without even darin’ to give my girl a kiss after theill I’d done her. ard made for a station a mile or more away. “Thadan awful time of it, for the hoy moaned every minute of the time; but I told people on the cars that he’d had a fall and I was takin’ him toa doctor. I trav- eled all day in the fastest trains, and got toa town just about dusk. Here I called a doctor to the bov. He doubted if he could save him; but he pulled through after five weeks of terrible fever and pain, though when he got up again, lookin’ more likea spirit than l*ke flesh and blood, he didn’t know me or remernber anything that had happened. The doctor said he was a fool, and always would be one.” Tt seemed very strange to Geoffrey to be sitting there in his right mind and listening to this dreadful story about himself. It seemed almost like a case of dual exist- ence. comicloookks.€