Under Fire: A Tale of the Shenandoah Valley — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

22 TWO IS COMPANY, BUT THREE IS A CROWD. ‘Woman, you lie!’’ “T do not lie, Captain Trafton. You are the father of my child. I swear it—before Heaven!’ Mary Bluff raised her arm in solemn asseveration, and Ezra T'rafton, convinced of the truth in spite of himself, sank back in his chair. ae teed CHAPTER IV. ™WO IS COMPANY, BUT THREE IS A CROWD. If ever there was a baffled, dismayed man, that per- son was Captain Trafton at that moment. _ And Mary Bluff, like an accusing Nemesis stood darkly in the foreground. Where now was Ezra’s castle building in which Bertha McVane was the central figure? Ruin and bitter disappointment stared him out of countenance unless—— His master, the devil, was at his elbow surely, for a dark, grim, desperate resolve developed itself upon this brain, where since the early morning but a shad- owy negative of the purpose had existed. ‘“‘T have every proof needed of your villainy,’’ said Mary Bluff. ‘*The confession of the scoundrel who enacted the part of the minister. The acknowledg- ments of the two witnesses seduced by your money. Oh, it was a brave deed for a Southern gentleman to lend himself to, wheie a weak, confiding, unsophisti- cated woman was the object of his unbridled attain- ment. It was contemptible! It was criminal! You call yourself a partof our Southern chivalry! Is it not the boast of every true son of the South that a woman is by right and nature entitled to the pinnacle of respect and esteem? Yet you, unworthy scion of such a precious heritage, have dared to contaminate _— Gomicbooks.co