The Prairie Detective: Secret Service Series No. 24 — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

94 THE PRAIRIE DETECTIVE. sooner or later she must have succumbed. It was an unequal contest, and although she struggled on with pluck and energy, her overtaxed system at last gave way under the strain. She had been strong through many trials and much hardship; but when her power began to fade under the load she had taken upon herself, it departed with extreme sud- denness. Almost before she could realize that she was fatigued, she found herself overcome by a feeling of drowsy faintness. Determined efforts she made to shake off the new and unwelcome sensation, but they were all to no purpose, for each succeeding moment found her weaker than before. Her limbs tottered under her, and her feet became as heavy as lead. <A dull lethargy settled upon her whole being like a black pall of night. With sublime courage she struggled to rouse herself and call back her de- parted energy, but the attempt was only successful fora moment. She staggered forward a few paces farther, and then the great weakness overcame her beyond the power of resistance. Deep and impene- _trable gloom settled over her vision; alow rumbling noise sounded in-her ears; the strength in her limbs went out; and with a scarcely perceptible groan she sank upon the ground at the foot of a huge tree. She had fainted from exhaustion. Through the following hours of that long night she remained helpless and unconscious, lying in the bed of soft, fragrant mosses where she had fallen. The warm sun, bathing the world with liquid glory, looked upon her, lying breathless and apparently powerless, and the wide-spreading branches of the old forest monarch held over her like a pro- tecting canopy. ™e => comicbooks.com >