Roanoke of Roanoke Hall: A Romance — page 87: what you’re looking at

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

Roanoke of Roanoke Hall, 81 weird look of haunting terror which I had seen on her face the night we first met. So greatly did this expression daunt me that I came before long to avoid her com- pany when I could do so, preferring rather to weary in solitude than to encounter that awful gaze. . . For some months my life was depressing beyond my power to tell, and indeed I should often and often have run away to seek fortune, however ill, elsewhere, had I believed it possi- ble that I could issue with life from the encircling sands. In truth, I think I should have eventually gone distracted from sheer inaction, had I not, in the early days of December, discovered a method of diverting myself. Many times in my ramblings about -the gloomy house I had remarked the great number of guns and fowling-pieces in the large hall on the second floor, which I had for that reason entitled the armory, before it occurred to me that if I could beg from Meg some ammunition I might practise the art of shooting on the countless sea-gulls that all day filled the air with their mournful cry- ing. ( VOIOY | © comichbooks.com