A Study in Scarlet (Serial Edition Cover) — page 124: what you’re looking at

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

16 A STUDY IN SCARLET. secutors of the most terrible description. Not the In. quisition of Seville, nor the German Vehmgericht, nor the secret societies of Italy, were ever able to put a more formidable machinery in motion than that which cast a cloud over the Territory of Utah. Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It ap- peared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. ‘The man who held out against the church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone, or what had befallen him. His wife and children awaited him at home, but no father ever re- turned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was fol- lowed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was sus- pended over them. No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them. At first this vague and terrible power was exercised enly upon the recalcitrants, who, having embraced the Mormon faith, wished afterward to pervert or to abandon It. Soon, however, it took a wilder range. ‘The supply - of adult women was running short, and polygamy, with- out a female population on which to draw, was a barren doctrine indeed. Strange rumors began to be bandied about—rumors of murdered immigrants and rifled camps in regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the elders—women Gomicboo ‘2. SiG