The Argosy — page 95: what you’re looking at

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

How Lord Roland Met hs Wife. 85 hands. As he held it the whole scene of the evening came rushing back upon his mind. He saw again the ancient tower, the ivy- mantled window, and the lovely girl who sat there looking at her birds. Perhaps at that very moment she was seeking for her favourite, and wondering whither it had strayed. At least her bird should be her own again. Why should it share his fate? He was about to let it fly when a thought struck him; it was singular that it had not struck him sooner. He instantly replaced the pigeon in the basket, took out the book and pencil with which he had been writing when the dwarf attacked him, and wrote swiftly, “‘ The stranger who visited your tower this evening has been seized by smugglers, and left bound in a cave just where the rocks begin, with a candle burning in a powder-cask before him. It will soon explode. He/p/” He wrapped the paper round the pigeon’s leg, and secured it with a strip torn off his handkerchief. It could not hinder the bird’s flight, nor could it fail to catch the eye at the first glance. Then he released the messenger. It spread its wings, flew twice or thrice about the cave, then darted through the outlet, and vanished in an instant out of sight. Roland watched it vanish, bearing on its wings the fates of life and death. His heart beat high with hope; but in a few minutes it sank again to despair. The chance that the bird’s return would be observed, and the letter found, before it was too late, was so faint as to be almost nothing. But, strange to say—perhaps because his nerves had reached that point of tension beyond which they failed to act—his mind began to lose its consciousness of danger. He sat there, looking idly at the candle, and noting, with a kind of languid interest, that the flame had made itself a ‘“‘winding-sheet.” The wick was long; its top leant over, glowing red. What if a spark should fall into the powder? At one moment he could almost wish it would; at the next, the thought aroused him to new frenzy, and he fought and struggled at his chain until he gasped for breath, and the moisture streamed from every pore. At last he sank exhausted on the block, and lay there without motion. How long it was before he raised himself he could not tell; it must have been much longer than he thought; for as his eye again fell on the candle, he felt a shock of horror. Not half an inch of it remained ; the stump was melting down into a shapeless mass, in which the wick was flaring. A few moments, and the end m#must come ! With his eyes fixed upon the flame, his breath held, and his arms crossed on his breast, as a doomed soldier stands before the guns of his companions, he nerved himself for the last moment. Hark ! what was that? A footstep on the rocks outside the cave; a footstep drawing nearer—nearer. He strove to raise his voice; in vain; his tongue COMIC OOOlKS. CO