Ruby's Reward — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER ff. “CHOOSE YOUR OWN PATH, AND WALK UNAIDED IN IT.” Ralph Carpenter, the master of Forestvale, a beauti- ful estate in the suburbs of the City of Brotherly Love, was dead, He breathed his last toward morning of the next day after the sudden attack mentioned In the preceding chapter, Walter and the nurse remained with him fill the end, watching the tide of life ebb slowly away, and dolog what they could for tls comfort, while the son and heir slept soundly until morning, and awoke to be told that lls father was no more. Eamund Carpenter made no outward demonstration of grief, though he went about with a pale, set face, and Insisted that every mark of respect should be pald the dead in the approaching obsequies. But down in his heart there was really no deep-seated sorrow on account of his loss; for, for long years he had been cherlshing a feeling of resentment toward his father for an act which should have commanded his highest admiration and love, and now the discovery that he had just made re- garding a will having been left, had served to embltter him ten-fold. He had always been keenly jealous of Walter. The boy, from the first, had been «a Verltable thorn in the flesh to him, although he had taken palns to conceal the fact from his father, from a fear of incurring his dis- pleasure, but the feeling had grown with his growth nevertheless. Edmund Carpenter had been an extremely selfish boy; he was, consequently, an extremely selfish man, and the thought that any one should come between him and any portion of his inherltance—ags he had feared Walter would, knowing how tenderly his father loved him—was torture to him. He was five years Walter's senior, and had reached. fifteen years of age when Mr. Carpenter returned from a trip to New York, bringing with him the little lad yi was henceforth to share equally with him in all things, Mrs, Carpenter had died two years previously, but she had lived long enough to thoroughly Imbue the mind of Edmund with much of her own cold, proud nature. She had always been a woman of the word... Q A ON OORS-COM