Roxy Hastings — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

“EM pat ROXY HASTINGS. | Louis Hartley was in reality the saddest man among them, though, personally exempt, so great was his fears for Alfred. He thought he had a presentiment that the doom was to fall upon his friend, and he tried hard and vainly to throw off this idea. Louis still kept his bed the greater part of every day, and though he was on this day perfectly able to be up, and was rapidly recovering his strength, he retained his re- cumbent position by Alfred’s directions. ‘“We must use a little strategy,” the latter said. “IfI ‘should be drawn to-morrow, they will doubtless remove me to some other place, and perhaps put me in solitary confinement. Yet if you contiune sick and helpless, it is possible they will allow you to be with me.” “Do not talk of being drawn, Alfred,” said the other, ‘It is impossible that Heaven will permit it. I cannot— will not believe it.” ‘‘It would be as hard for any of the rest of these boys as for me,” replied Lee, ‘‘and they all have as fond friends to mourn for them. Life is dear to us-all, and of course I shall rejoice if I escape. As to Gray being hung, I have not a doubt of it.” The night passed wearily away, and Alfred’s slumbers. were filled with visions of some vast and undefined evil, which seemed perpetually about to overtake him. When daylight gleamed dimly through his prison win- dows he awoke only to feel that his friend’s infectious pre- sentiment had passed into his own mind, and to feel some- thing like a certainty that he was to draw the fatal ball. We have seen that he was nota coward, and that on the field of battle none were braver than he, yet the thought of such a death as that which threatened him was very op- pressive. The scaffold, the halter, ignominy, and oblivion. No halo of fame would linger about his memory. If he could fall on the battle-field, while the charging shout was ringing in his ears, or better still, while the pzens of vic- ‘tory were resounding through the air—then, oh, then, he felt that death might be sweet. But here, such a termina- tion to his young life, and his high hopes—the thought was sickening—horrible. | ‘I will not draw,” he said to Louis. ‘‘I feel as if some in- exorable fatality would guide my fingers directly to the ball of doom. No, let others decide it. I will look on, and will try resignedly to take whatever a wise and just Provi- ~ dence decrees.” Louis tried to dissuade his friend from his gloomy fore- _ (ee) ecomicbooks