Laura Brayton — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

LAURA BRAYTON. a watch upon him and what was its purpose. Therefore, for his own gratification he would not compromise her safetv. Have you ever felt, when the sky was cloudless 113 and nature seemed rosy with smiles, a sudden, almost undefinable chill come over the atmosphere, which instantly told you, from past experience, though you could see no signs of it, that a storm was close at hand, which would soon wrap the earth in darkness and in tears? Just so, at times, an unknown, chilling dread of some portending evil creeps on our mind, almost as surely to be followed by some grief, some storm to ruffle the sea of life. And Laura Brayton, when she sat eating her cold lunch, for she would build no fire until it was nearly time for Annie to return, felt just such an ominous chill. -“Can it be that sickness or death is to reach me, or him whom I love more than myself?” she mur- nmured. And even while her red lips quivered with the whispered words, her door was thrown rudely open, and Enoch Sharp, with a policeman in uniform, ac- companied by Nathan Sloth, and followed by the old gentleman who owned the house, entered the room. “Undutiful girl, thus to hide away from your almost broken-hearted guardian,” cried Sharp, ina sniveling tone. “How wretched you have made me, fearing you had been enticed into some of the horrible dens of infamy which yawn to ingulf the pure and innocent in this great city. Thank Heaven you have been under the roof of a good Christian man, where, asI hear, no harm could reach you; ee) boo cS com