Laura Brayton — page 203: what you’re looking at

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

194 LAURA BRAYTON. When he did so, he found the safe locked and the key gone. “Oh, misery!” he groaned. “What can this mean? Is this fearful secret known to some one? Is the body there or not? I dare not have the safe opened. Satan is leagued against me at last.” Again that horrible, mocking—— | Slt. Na Mas LO | Wild with terror, afraid to fly and afraid to stay, the miserable wretch actually drank the remaining part of a bottle of brandy which he had opened after his dreadful discovery of the corpse in the MALO. Ve 2% The fiery spirit ran wildJy through his horror- frozen veins; his eyes flashed, his color. came back. “Laugh, you devils, laugh!” he shouted. “I am equal to you all Blood—blood! I will drink blood! W hat care I for ghosts or corpses? Ha, ha! Luke Withers, your time has come! You have come back to rob me, but you shall not, no, you shall die!” With a horrible earnestness, he went to the case where he kept his razors. One of these he took out, and, as he felt its edge with his finger, a ghastly smile of satisfaction lighted his face. ~ “T must wait a little while. He will sleep—sleep sound, for he is tired. And the girl—her room is over his—she will not hear, for I will make no noise. If she does, what matter, for she, too, must die. How lucky that I got rid of Nathan Sloth. He would have to go, too, where his tongue could do no harm. But I must keep the fire up, or I shall be too weak in body and heart.” And he went after another bottle of liquor. Open- ing this, he drank again, and then, taking off his ‘comicbooks.co