Gratia's Trials — page 207: what you’re looking at

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

198 GRATIA'S TRIALS. feathery ferns for the center-table, when there was a slight com- motion below stars. Mrs. Falconer heard it, and the least possible flush flitted across her graciously smiling brow. She knew too well the way in which her youngest son was apt to come home at ten or eleven o'clock, after one of his lengthened carouses, but at the same time she had the utmost possible confidence in the dis- cretion of Scipio, and never turned her head. A piercing shriek from Alberta made her start up with a cheek blanched to ashen whiteness, and she beheld, borne into the very midst of the festive gathering, on a board, supported by half a dozen rough-looking men, the blood-stained body of Robert Falconer, with a crimson table-cloth thrown over him, and his pale face staring up to the ceiling. ‘‘T’ve surprised you, mother, haven't I?” he said, with a jarring laugh. ‘‘ But I’ve always suspected that it would end just in this way some day. I’m sorry to spoil sport, but they would bring me here. Don’t touch me, Hugo,” as his elder brother approached him with a grave, stern face; ‘‘the life is dropping, in big clots, out of me, and I don’t know what any one would gain by trying to check itnow. They told me, at the first, it was a fatal wound; but I sha’n't peach on the fellow who did it. #[t was in one of those gambling-house frays, and I don't think he meant to strike so hard. Lay me down some- where, you blockheads !” to the men, who were looking vaguely at the splendors that surrounded them. ‘‘ What are you staring at? And, mother, you come close to me; you've always been good to your wild boy. I don’t say but that it serves me right, but its rather hard on you. What’s the use of that?” as a physician—the very Dr, Hayley who had been summoned so suddenly to the house the morning when Mr. Ralph Miller had been found dead in his room—entered the apartment, with a case of surgical instruments in his hand. ‘‘ Nobody can help me now, and I won't be tortured. Just a swallow of Comicbooks:co m