Geoffrey's Victory by Mrs Georgie Sheldon — page 195: what you’re looking at

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

A STARTLING RECOGNITION. hee yeas way, while #t seemed as if he had no heart to ask Geoffrey anything about the trip from which he had just returned, The young man waited a few moments, hoping he would question him; butas he still remained absorbed in his own sad thoughts, he at length remarked : ‘Well, Jack, I found Farmer Bruce.” “Ay! then he’s alive yet; he must be nigh on to sixty,” the man replied, looking up now with a gleam of inter- est. “T should judge him to be about that; but he’s hale and hearty, and seems like a very kind-hearted man, too.” ‘‘S better never lived!” Jack affirmed; “many’s the good turn he and his wife has done me, and—ah !——-” A shiver completed the sentence, as if those by-gone days were too painful] to dwell upon. Geoffrey pitied the poor fellow from the depths of his heart, and yet he hardly knew where to begin, or how to break his good news to him. “Shall I tell you what Mr. Bruce told me, Jack?” he at length asked. The man nodded, and, by the light of the moon, his companion sawa gray pallor settle over his face, which seenied to have grown almost rigid in its outlines. Geoffrey began by telling him how Mrs. Bruce had gone over to borrow some tea vuf Mrs. Henly, the day follow- ing Jack’s flight; how she knocked and there came no response, when she stepped into the kitchen and found Margery lying on the floor, and becoming so frightened at the sight, she had turned and fled back to her home, with bardly more than a glance at the prostrate woman. ‘Farmer Bruce,” he went on, “at once went back to your house, taking his son anda hired man with him. They lifted Margery and laid her on her bed, and then John Bruce rode off with all his might after a doctor——” “Doctor! Whatcould they want of a doctor?’—a cor- oner, ye mean,” interrupted Jack, in a thick, hoarse voice. ‘‘No, a doctor, Jack—she needed one; she didn’t need @ coroner.” : ve Ha he The man started wildly to his feet as the hoarse cry burst from him; then he sank back again, pressing his hands hard against his temples and staring about him in ~ a half-dazed way, as if he had not comprehended what he had heard. COMME NOOKS (CO) =)