Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 23 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a page of running prose from what appears to be a Victorian-era serialized narrative titled "Oxheart" (page 7). The text describes an evening scene at a Virginia plantation house and introduces the Anderson family—a widow, her son Major Audley Anderson (connected to Washington's army), and his three children including young Tom. The passage establishes that Tom enlisted under military commander Lachlan McIntosh to conduct a campaign against Native Americans on the western frontier, foreshadowing dramatic events to come in the story.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
OxHEART 7 a-going from dawn till dark — just as surely as dawn broke and dark fell. The L is mentioned thus particularly because it is important to this story. The half-mile of lawn on either side of the avenue was still green and grateful. Ihe air was full of evening sounds: the far-off tinkle of sheep-bells and cattle-bells, the rhythmic jangle of trace-chains, the yodeling of the field-hands, and one mellow legato note, far-reaching as a church-bell, ““Come wench, come wench, — Come!”’ It set a pack of echoes calling cows from the comb of the Blue Ridge. The red west touched the old house now “and many an oak that grew thereby” with sumptuous light; and the boy riding along the road yonder looked about him with kindling eyes. Who could have foreseen that here, presently, the cur- tain would rise upon a fierce drama? Jom Anderson was cast for a part in plots, hazards, adventures, wilder than he had ever pictured to himself at midnight with “The Arabian Nights” under his eyes, and the last crumb of his last candle stuck on his knife-blade! Fate was busy. This Virginia boy’s future was to be as furious and fan- tastic as if he had pounded his way into the afrite’s cas- ket and let a devil leak out, one of King Jamschid’s devils: ancient as the sun. The Anderson family consisted of Mrs. Sarah Anderson, the widowed mistress of Oxheart House; her son, Major Audley Anderson, of Washington’s army, a man under fifty ; and his three motherless children, Troupe, om, and Dare. The last was a girl of fourteen. Troupe was nine- teen, and had seen two or three years’ service. Instead of being off to Cambridge or Oxford, the proper thing for the sons of Southern gentlemen, he enlisted with Lachlan McIntosh when, “the western frontiers of the. country being the scene of great atrocities committed by the Indians, it was determined to punish them.” ‘* Wash- ington, who entertained a high opinion of the justice and military talents of McIntosh, selected him to conduct the campaign. With a force of five hundred men he marched GOMOD OO SS (CO) im