The Illegal Marriage — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

104 THE ILLEGAL MARRIAGE. Stannard’s halloa at the gate, and looked out into the gray morning twilight. It was a long time before she could collect her scattered senses. Were the events of this terrible night real, or had she dreamed them? With damp clothing, and senses still wandering, Cecy crept to the bed to see her father, and had just kneeled there when Stannard entered the room. Old Morgan was near his death when his neigh- bors arrived. For the past twenty-four hours he had been really insane, and, in all probability, knew not what he did; but acted with that bold- ness and cunning peculiar to lunatics. Stannard listened intently to catch the old man’s words, but could make nothing of them, and set them down as the ravings of a madman. “Tt’s all yours, my boy,” Morgan said, feebly, squeezing Stannard’s hand. “I killed her—she killed me, boy, she killed me—I’d rather see her in her grave than married to him. All yours, my boy, with a little wife;” but suddenly he seemed to realize what he was saying. “No, no, Stannard, I killed her—killed her with my own hand.” It was pitiful to hear this poor old man, fast sink- ing into his grave, mumble out such words; and Stannard’s eyes were filled with tears, as he stood beside his good old friend, who was going. from earth in this dreadful manner. It was perfectly evident to Stannard that Morgan was out of his head, for he raved of killing his daughter, when she was alive before him; and with this fancy was another that he had been killed by her. Yet again he would think of the past, and mutter over the hopes which Stannard had heard years ago, when a mere boy. Gomicbooks.co