Thrice Lost, Thrice Won — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER IV. ROYSTEN DARRELL COUNTERPLOTS. As Dick Derwent’s footsteps died away, the eavesdropper emerged from the shadow into the fitful moonlight, and the lofty stature and bold, handsome face of Captain Roysten Darrell was revealed. “Sol” he thought, with a long whistle, “the game grows interesting—the plot thickens! A rival in the field, eh? Mr. Dick Derwent, sub-editor of the Rockledge News, ‘thinks to outwit Dare-devil Darrell! How lucky I stayed here, waiting for Briggs, and how doubly lucky that Briggs hasn’t come! My pretty little Kistella, we'll see whether Roysten Darrell or Dick Derwent will win the game !” He strode: over the beach, whistling “My Love Is But a Lassie Yet,” and lost in thought. “There wail be the devil to pay with Carlotta, ” he mused, his brow knitting; “she’s as stubborn as a mule, and as ‘eslous as—as a jealous woman—but she must yield! I don’t care a sou for the girl, and if I ean get her to belteve that and dazzle her with the prospective fortune, she may hear to reason. But managing Estella will be a trifle to managing her. The very old demon is in her, I believe, when her spirit is up.” He walked along rapidly—a long, lonely walk. The watery glimmer of the pale moon ht up the long-deserted. beach, the waste of moaning sea, the beetling cliffs overhead. He walked. | along for upward of a mile over the shingly shore, passing the spot where the Raven lay rising and falling lazily on the long groundswell. No human habitation was in sight, no living thing met his view—the sobbing night wind, the moaning sea, the pallid moonlight had the ghastly stretch of shore all to themselves. But Roysten Darrell hastened along, with the air of a man who knows where he is going. Another half mile was passed, and then the first.sign of human habitation came in view. And yet, was it a habitation? A low, ruinous black building, dark and deserted, known as the “Den” to the fishermen along the coast and popularly supposed to be haunted—an un- speakably ghastly place to be inhabited. No ray of light came from its boarded windows, no sound from its gloomy walls, but at the door of this dreary ruin the captain of the Raven stopped, and, applying his lips to the keyhole, whistled shrilly three times. The signal was almost immediately answered. Bolts shot comic Doo <S.co