Laura Brayton — page 77: what you’re looking at

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

«8 | LAURA BRAYTON. CHAPTER XII. THE COMPACT. Enoch Sharp sat in his library, watching the face of the clock. Its hand pointed to half-past eleven. “Tt is time that the wretch whom Bartram calls ‘Lobster Joe,’ was here,” he said, impatiently. “Well, the wretch is here, boss. What do you want of him?” Sharp sprang to his feet in sudden terror, for ina shrill, snarling voice, like the growling of an ugly cur, these words came to-his ear. | And there, close to his chair, stood a slender, yet large-boned fellow, poorly clad, with sharp, wild eves, a face full of freckles and blotches, and with a large, hooked, red nose, so like the claw of a boiled lobster that there was no wonder at the name oiven him by his associates. “How did you get into this room without my knowledge?” cried the lawyer, in pezed surprise and anger. “That is my business, boss. I haven’t such a good character that it would do even you any good to have it known to servants or anybody else that I visited you,” snarled the man, impudently. “You wanted me, and I’m here. It isall the better that nobody else knows it. If it would pay, I could choke you to death, and people would think the old "un from below had come after your soul, and had to strangle you to get it.” | And the man stretched out his Breed bony. \ com * comicbooks