The Argosy — page 311: what you’re looking at

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

Within their Gates. 295 Square with him. And did you notice how he started when he first saw us?” “TI only noticed that he awoke suddenly out of sleep, and looked very tired. I fear you hurt his feelings.” “ Hurt a fiddlestick,” rejoined Mr. Owen. “ A straightforward man does not object to telling who he is. Hold the reins a minute, will you, Mary? See this trace!” The trace had to be spliced together in an impromptu fashion: as _ there were no materials ready to hand, it took some time to do: and it was very nearly dark when Billy’s owner mounted again to his place, took the reins from his daughter's hand, and started off at a rattling pace again, “Supper must be waiting,” he remarked, “and they'll all be wonder- ing what has become of us. I hope we shall not meet that man. He took this road, and perhaps he may lie down for another nap, and make Billy break the other trace.” They drove rapidly along the darkening highway, but they saw no sign of the pedestrian with whom they had parted at the fork of the road. A dusk mantle of twilight clothed the broad fields on each side. Over the infinite depths of blue sky a few stars were sprinkled, when the farmer at last drew Billy up at his own gate. As he did so, Mary uttered a sudden, startled cry. ; “Father,” she exclaimed, “look! What's that ?—there !—on the ground ?” “What do you mean?” testily inquired Mr. Owen, whose eyes were not so good as her own, and whose patience was beginning to give way. “Ts it that confounded fellow again?” Without answering, his daughter sprang lightly out of the gig, and ran forward to the gate, where on the ground—almost under Billy’s feet, and immediately in front of Billy’s path—lay prone and senseless the figure of the stranger with whom they had parted half an hour before. “Tt is the same man,” she said, as her father came more deliberately to her side; ‘‘and I—I think he’s dead.” “Not a bit of it,” said Mr. Owen, feeling the warm skin and the feebly-beating pulse. ‘“ But he seems to be in a bad way, from some cause or other—I hope it’s not whisky. Run to the house, Mary, and send somebody here. Whoever he is, he is lying helpless at our own gate, and we shall have to take him in now.” Mary obeyed his order literally. She ran with the fleetness of a deer to the dwelling-house. It was a low, substantial tenement, surrounded by its farm-buildings, and looking on in front to a good garden and grass-plat, which was shut in by trees. Any dwelling-place more soli- tary than this could not well be found, for not another of any descrip- tion was within sight. gle comicbooks.com ma