The Opposite House: A Novel — page 212: what you’re looking at

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

The Opposite House. 207 officer to see the familiar features near him. He felt less desolate after recognizing his companion in suffering at his side. By Traugott’s special request the Frenchman had received on the battle-field the prompt and careful aid without which the feeble spark of life would have been long since extinguished ; now the young Ger- man tended him as one tends a beloved friend whose wishes we seek to read in the eyesere they are uttered. The stranger was far too severely wounded to keep pace with Gerrald in his recovery. He could rarely exchange a few words with him—nay, he scarcely recognized his Samaritan of the battle-field ; and when consciousness slowly returned, as conva- lescence progressed, he lay on his couch of pain in gloomy silence, staring mournfully at the clouds of snow which the tempest drove westward. He could never again dance or ride, as if to vie with the little flakes ; he had become a cripple; sound and vigor- ous in mind, but broken in strength in the very prime of life ! It was a gloomy winter evening. The storm raged through the streets, creaking the rusty vane, driving the icy flakes against the panes and heap- ing them high on the frozen earth, then sweeping them away and spreading them out in a glimmering pall, beneath which all the magnificence and glad. ness of the wide world lay buried, Comicbookk<s