The Argosy — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

A Girl’s Folly. 35 Old Mr. Watkyn sank into a chair, putting up his hands before his troubled face. ‘I see it all!” he breathed, faintly: ‘‘he must have fallen down the Scar.” Alison uttered a scream of horror. “ Deceived by the mist, he must have walked too near its edge,” continued the old man. ‘‘ Heaven grant that it may not be so! but—lI fear it. Was he mad? —to attempt to cross the plateau on such a night!” Catching up his hat, Mr. Watkyn went out swiftly. Mrs. Reece grasped her daughter’s hands. ‘They were icy-cold. 3 ‘‘ Alison, what passed between you and Thomas last night P” ‘‘Don’t ask me, mother! Let me follow Mr. Watkyn; I cannot rest indoors. Oh, it cannot, cannot be as he fears! ” “ Not one step until you tell me what passed,” said the mother firmly. ‘‘ There’s more in all this than meets the eye.” ‘He asked me to—give up talking to Mr. Vavasour.” “ And you refused. Well?” “He told me I must choose between them,” continued Alison, bursting into tears. ‘‘Oh, mother, it was all folly, all my temper; he could not see that, and when he went away, he said he went for good.” Mrs. Reece drew in her thin lips sternly. She stood thinking. “And what does it mean about your giving him a note for the dressmaker? I do not understand. You had nothing to write about.” | The girl got her hands free and flung them before her face to deaden the sobs. But Mrs. Reece was a resolute mother at times, and she extorted the confession. Alison had improvised the note, and sent Thomas round the long way to deliver it, and so keep him from passing by the Willow walk. “Oh, child, child!” moaned the dismayed woman. “If he has indeed fallen over the Scar, it is you who will have given him his death.” | And it proved to be so. In taking the two mile round between the cottage and the farm, a high and perpendicular precipice, called the Scar, had to be passed. ‘The table-land, or plateau, on the top was wide and a perfectly safe road by daylight, since a traveller could keep as far from the unprotected edge as he pleased. But on a dark night or in a thick fog it was most dangerous. Deceived by the mist of the previous night, Thomas Watkyn must have drawn near the edge unwittingly, and fallen over it. There he lay, on the sharp rocks, when the poor father and others went to look for him, his death-like face upturned to the blue sky. «Speak to me, Thomas! speak to me!” wailed Alison, quite beside herself with remorse and grief, as she knelt by him, wringing her hands. “Oh, Thomas, speak to me! I loved you all the while,” mn COMICOOOKS.EO