The Argosy, October 1906 — page 197: what you’re looking at

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

SEEN THROUGH A FIELD- GLASS. BY ‘LEANDER’ S. KEYSER. A long-distance view which seemed to prove that, after all, seeing is not believing. AVE you ever felt the cold chills Tun up and - down your spinal cord? “True, it is difficult to compre- hend how chills could be anything but “cold” ; yet ‘something must be conceded to a popular mode of expression. ~~ Well, that was ‘Robert Mandell’s ex- perience as he stood on the — eae at the -border of the weeds, through his powerful ! ield-g glass. It might be explained he 1 parenthesis, that ‘Robert ‘Mandell was an inveterate- rambler, and had gone out to the aforesaid hilltop on that fair April : _ day in. the: interest of certain investiga- tions in- natural history | that he was 3 carrying on. ‘Little: did Ae think that fe =< researches were to be BS and meyste: riously- interrupted. = ait 8 ‘sequestered sallow ‘that thrust itself like a wedge into the range of hills on the opposite side of the wide valley — surrounded — - murderer was carrying th: woman’s limp stood a small - farmhouse, with the. usual complement of outbuild- ings. It was perhaps nearly two miles _ftrem. -Mandell’s the premises in question. i For some cause, which he — never been ‘able to explain, he was focusing his binocula himsélf which he stood. the whole scene as vividly as- if it were only a few rods away. “Then it was that he wicect a tragedy - ‘which made him catch his breath in spasmodic gasps, and. sent the— shivers up and down his spine. T his is the scene that met his- horrified but. fas-" cinated “gaze: A man and a woman were = stesine face-to face in the yard at one side of the little farmhouse. They seemed to be engaged ¢ im a “somewhat heated dia- _on~his_ shoulder; _blade of which could be distinctly seen _ by the observer on the hilltop. He was post of observation to “held his shovel in his right hand. logue, for the woman made a number of emphatic gestures with her hand. The man held a long-handled shovel the bread, rounded rather young looking, with no beard save a dark mustache. The woman’s {face was young and fair, though at the dis- _ tance Mandell was not able to identify her features. Suddenly, to Robert Mandell’s dis- may, the man lifted his shovel and brought it down with all his force upon the woman’s head, crushing her to the ground. -Then he brutally struck her again, as if to make sure“his vietim was _ dead. Mandell gasped and matieed inco- herently in his excitement, and his frame trembled so that for a few moments he lost his focus on the terrible tragedy. When he again succeeded in getting the scene in the field of his glass, the form on. his shoulder up through the yard in the rear of the house, while he Rapidly he ran up threugh an orchard, then turned to the left, and fol- Apon the little homestead. He — s hidden among:the trees and saplings ~ ‘of the woodland border in- lowed a rail-fence that ran diagonally up the slope and partially screened him. All the while he was stooping low to ~ hide himself from possible prying eyes. His glass; which» hack a miagnifyin eS power of about five diameters, revealed At length he slipped stealthily into a climp of bushes at the berder of a sparse woodland. Through the network -of the twigs of the thicket, which was not yet covered with foliage, Mandell could see what the man was doing—dig- ging-a grave in which to bury his vic- - tim and hide the evidences of his crime. As he worked he glanced around at intervals in a nervous way, as if he feared detection. Mandell was so overwrought with ex- ‘Citement that he could hold the glass to his eyes only by a supreme effort of his Y com Eomicbooks