The Argosy — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

62 The Miller's Revenge. are never intended it, and Lebrun simmered with rage as this fact made itself apparent to his dull wits. “ But his rage was largely mingled with surprise when he saw the figure, after poising itself for a little while in a listening attitude on the ledge, as if waiting to assure itself that all was quiet in the mill, begin to squeeze itself, inch by inch, through the narrow aperture between the bars. ‘I wouldn't have believed that anything over a child of twelve could have made its way through that opening,’ whispered Lebrun to himself. It was easy enough for the figure to get its head through the bars, but it seemed to stick at the shoulders for full two minutes, and Lebrun laughed a silent sardonic laugh, and nodded his head grimly, feeling certain that the thief was caught inatrap. Buta little perseverance overcame the difficulty, as it had doubtless done on previous occasions. Then, a push, a wnggle, and a twist, and the intruder was inside the mill Lebrun’s shaggy brows came down over his darkling eyes at this, and he ground his teeth like a man in a fit. “¢What was the intruder—a child or a woman ?’ was the question that Lebrun now put to himself. If the latter, she must belong to a diminutive race: no woman of ordinary size could have squeezed her- self through so narrow an aperture. But whether woman or child, there could no longer be any doubt as to her felonious intenttons. As soon as she was fairly inside, she leaped lightly from the window sill on to a number of piled-up sacks of grain, and then slid to the ground. Stepping across the floor, almost as lhghtly.as a ca could have done, and brushing close by Lebrun in his hiding-place, she made her way, like one to whom the place was familiar, to where some tied-up sacks of flour stood ready for delivery. What her after move- ments might be, Lebrun could only guess at. If he guessed that at that very moment his flour was being stolen, he would probably not be far from the truth. “He was very impatient by this time, but he had not long to wait. In five minutes at the most from the time the figure brushed past him, it came gliding back again on its way to the window. He could just discern it by its being a shade blacker than the blackness that filled the inside of the mill. As it was in the act of passing him, he put out an iron hand and gripped it firmly by the shoulder. A woman’s shriek, loud and shrill, but over in a moment; a savage bite with.sharp teeth that met in the fleshy part of his hand; a loud curse from the miller as his fingers let go their grip; and next moment, as it seemed, the creature he had been holding had scrambled back to the window, and was clinging to the bars like an infuriated tiger-cat. But there she was stopped. Before she had got more than one arm through, the flash of Lebrun’s lantern smote her dazzled eyes, and his deep, harsh tones fell on her ear like the accents of doom. “Come down this instant, or I will blow out your brains !’ ECOMniclooolkks G (GO)