The Price He Paid — page 283: what you’re looking at

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

274 GABRIELLE’S RETURN.—RETROSPECTIVE. He paused, and gazed away into the misty dis- tance. Gabrielle laid her hand on his arm entreat- ingly. eAirnd, I have long felt that there is some bitter memory in your life, and I know it has come through some misfortune, and no fault. Will you not open your heart tome nowy Ithink I have a right to hear the tale.” “You have a right,” said Raven, gravely, “and you shall hear it.” He put his arm round her shoulder, and drew her nearer to him. “You know that I come of plain burgher stock. The early death of my parents taught:me betimes to think and act for myself. I entered the service _ of the State, and had to work my way up from the lowest grade. When the whole land was swept by a storm of revolution, and the capital itself was in a state of armed insurrection, of open’ rebellion against the government, I was chained to my desk in a remote provincial town, and so prevented from taking part in a movement with which my convic- tions led me to sympathize. The very next year, as chance would have it, | was transferred to the capi- tal; I was thus brought into closer contact with my chief, who had lately come into office, and was about to inaugurate that period of reaction which has since followed. I was drawn into revolutionary circles, to which my political convictions had long inclined me, by Brunnow, who was an enthusiastic reformer. He was at the head of a secret association of which I now became a member. We believed in Utopias, impossibilities, and chimeras, which could have no lasting existence in real life; but, foolish as was our creed, we would have died rather than abandon it.” Raven paused a moment. These recollections seemed to move him greatly. “Then came the catastrophe,” he went on, speak- ing now with more animation. “ We were suspected and watched, though we ourselves had no idea of it, until the minister himself took action against us. He must have supposed that I was in some Eomicbooks (E(0)