Thrice Lost, Thrice Won — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

6 Roysten Darrell. were six windows to the long, antique room, three looking east, over a bare expanse of desolate marsh and swampy meadow land, and three looking west, over a bleak, circular beach and illimitable waste of sea. Through one of thebe’ western windows the old man gazed at the lonesome prospect —at the long, forsaken shore, at the rain-beaten ocean. Far away to the right you caught a glimpse of a strag- gling village: far away to the left spread out the sodden marshes and bare, windy beach. No living thing was to be seen, but about a mile distant, rising and falling on the long groundswell, a low, dark schooner lay at anchor within a sheitered curve of the cireular shore. “Ay,” said the old man, apostrophizing this piratical-look- ing craft, “there you lie—black bird of ill-omen—rightly - named> the Raven. There you lie, black and forbidding! and many a dark deed has been done on your polished deck, and many a foul crime, I dare say, has your gloomy hulk hid- den. There you lie, you black buecaneer! fitting craft to be commanded by reckless Roysten—by Dare-deyil Darrell. And yet there are worse scoundrels out yonder in the world than the mad-headed smuggler captain—fortune-hunters. with glib tongues and polished manners; and ten to one but the girl may fall a victim to one of them if T let her go. Bet- ter marry Roysten Darrell than one of those aa hypocrites. Whatever -he 1s—give the deyil his due—lI don’ think it is in him to be unkind to a woman, He walked away from the window to the table, sncle up a letter. lying there, and read it over slowly, from beginning to end—a long letter, wr itten in a delicate, spidery hand, and siened “Helen Mallory.” He laid it down, after his slow nepcale seated himself before the sputtering fire, and wai thoughtfully into its gmoky heart. “And to think he should turn ie at last—after over sixteen years, and claim his child. To think that he should be a nobleman and a millionaire—-to think that this girl, half edu-. cated, half civilized, brought up by old Peter Fisher, should have the wonderful sang azure of the old regume in her veins, and be this French nabob’s sole heiress! It is like a fairy tale or a melodrama; it is like nothing in real hfe. Ha! that knock! Rockless Roysten at last.” A thundering knock, that made the lonely old house vi- brate, came to the front door. The old man smiled grimly as he heard it. “Tt is characteristic of thé man—Dare-devil Darrell’s knock the wide world over. Big, blundering, impetuous giant! Ten to one but he refuses to make his fortune; after all.” A slip-shod footstep was heard straggling along the lower : comicbooks.co