Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 88 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 88: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page 72: Running Prose from "Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil" This is a page of running prose narrative from a penny dreadful serial. The text describes Tom Anderson hiding a telltale red coat and accidentally striking his head while fleeing from a Vigilance Committee searching the mansion. The committee finds Tom unconscious and discovers a locked chamber—apparently used to quarantine smallpox victims—containing only ashes, soot, and a large horned owl. Old Seaborn, the butler, reports indignantly to Mrs. Anderson that the midnight intruders were not after British officers, and that the vigilantes found nothing suspicious in the plague-room.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
72 Tom ANDERSON, DarE-DEVIL Then a bullying voice in the hall door, “Come ahead with them-thur lanterns.” More noisy feet. Lights in the front piazza. Rushing into the loom-room, Tom jammed the telltale red coat into a roll of sole-leather lying under Ole’s workbench. Out of the room and away now — to escape the Inquisition. “Have my tongue cut out, before Ill answer ’em.”’ On the floor lay the tallow-dip he had knocked from the table. In the act of running he set foot upon it. Down he crashed. His temple struck the bench of a spinning-wheel. When the Vigilance Committee penetrated to the up- stairs weaving-room in the L of the mansion, they found the saddler, Fauchetegoat, — they knew him for an honest man,— asleep in his hammock bed, his snores undisturbed by the racket. Young Anderson they found lying on the floor, insensible from his fall. The cause of the accident was clear. ‘They laid him on the bed, applied restoratives, and left him in the servant-woman’s hands. The search proceeded. At their bidding the key of a locked door was produced. Old Seab, the butler, fetched the key and himself set wide the door of the mysterious cham- ber. And vigilance cooled at the sight of the ashes of pes- tilence. | “Phew! Here’s where they smoked out the smallpox!” A ghostly, ghastly, abandoned room. The windows open; soot and ashes sown everywhere; and there, perched on the cornice of a denuded, once magnificent bed, a big horned owl! — which had flown in out of the night and housed himself in the plague-haunted chamber, unmolested and unafraid. Said old Seaborn indignantly, when he made his report to Mrs. Anderson: “En’ I tell you, mistis, ma’am, dem midnight m’rauders never hankered ter hunt British awfi- cers in dar! Tole ’em we done our bes’ ter keep de smallpox shot up in dar;—en’ dee had vigilance ‘nuff not ter resk deeselves inside dat do’. ‘Nothin’ here but de owels en’ { 7? de plague,’ — bang! dee shot dat do’! ECONMMIELOOO KS ne) m