The Widowed Bride — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

56 THE WIDOWED BRIDE. them, and was stealing softly out, moving with panther- like 4 precatition and stealthiness. Rena, scarcely daring to breathe, much less move, lay with dilated eyes, watching her. “She is going off to leave us! she means to run away - from us!” was her first thought, and she had started up with the idea of following, when she began to realize how foolish it was to apprehend any such imaginary change. The shawl and red cloak lay close by, their owner would probably re-- turn soon, and there certainly existed no sufficient motive — for the gipsy thus abruptly deserting the little companions she had voluntarily adopted. Yet, in spite of all these consoling reflections, Rena lay nervously watching and listening as the peaceful night wore on. ‘‘T wonder where she can be going?” she thought. ‘‘T wonder why she didn’t wake us up? Oh, if she shouldn’t come back at all!” The horror of this renewed anxiety was still torturing the poor little lonely waif, when the sound of low voices below relieved her in some degr ee—a man’s deep tone, subdued to its least audible pitch, and the peculiar gruff accents of the pretended gipsy. ‘“T tell you,” the former said, speaking as if in some irri- tation, ‘it wouldn’t do—the healke are on thescent.” “And you'll let me take all the danger! - That’s a DEO. note, that is!” “There ain’t none—not for you! Youve kept dark this six months, and there ain't nobody knows you ure in the country. And then the kids——” ‘““Well, well!” interrupted the woman, “‘it’s got to beas you says. Mind you’re ready for me, that’s all; 1t won’t.do to run norisks, or it may be a black night’s work for more’n one of us!” And Rena, who had listened eagerly to these uncompre- hended words, could hear the soft tread of the stranger dying away on the grass, and the rustling movements of her protectress among the hay, as she seemed to be undoing and rearranging the bundles she had used for her pillows. She - was yet busied in this occupation, when the child, wearied out by watching, and fatigued, fell fast asleep. When she was roused, at the earliest dawn of morning, to resume their journey, she might almost have been tempted we believe the whole o occurrence the troubled visions of slum- =comicboo ‘S co!