His Other Wife: A Novel — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

64 AMY'S DISCOVERIES. master’s sight as much as possible, and, when the family all retire for the night, come back here to me.” ‘‘Fur sartin I will, boss,” said Amy, with grateful earn- estness; for she instinctively divined that some purpose inimical to Croft’s safety was formed in the mind of the Indian. He then allowed her to depart, assuring her that it was not in the least likely that Mr. Croft would ever attempt to look up the vial; on the contrary, he predicted that the gentleman would speedily evacuate those premises alto- gether. The Indian, who had acquired considerable knowledge of chemistry and the compounding of drugs while serving as errand boy to a drug store in his youth, and whose na- tive genius for the art of medicine had been assiduously cultivated by observation and such desultory reading as he could gain access to, had formed in his own mind a con- clusion of which he gave no hint to the mulattress. The woman who had drunk the contents of that vial was at that moment either a blackening corpse or not dead at all. An overdose of the poison would instantly kill and dis- color the victim—an underdose would induce a cataleptic sleep which so closely simulated death that the ablest anat- omist might be deceived by the appearances. Amy had emphatically stated that at the moment of being screwed up in her coffin Mrs. Croft had resembled a person fast asleep. | The Indian drew a startling inference from that fact. 3 Eomicbooks.¢o