The Argosy — page 289: what you’re looking at

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

270 The Amethyst Seal. Harold went on his way, scarcely meeting a creature, until he reached a point on which he had fixed previously in his own mind. A little way back from the road, on a piece of waste land, stood the carcases, as they are called, of two new houses which had never been completed, in all probability because the builder had fallen short of funds. ‘They had been standing untouched any time these two years, and Harold had noticed them more than once when journeying be- tween Stilwater and Barrowcliff. Nothing could well look more desolate and forlorn. ‘They were so many bare walls of bare brick, roofed in with bare slates, and that was all; windowless and doorless they stood, open to all the winds that blew. | When Dare reached this lonely spot he came to a stand. For full two minutes he stood without moving, listening intently. For any sound of human life that he could hear he might have been the last man left alive in the world. Satisfied that he had nothing to fear on the score of being seen or heard, he crossed the patch of weed- covered ground and entered one of the unfinished houses. Here he halted and struck a match, with which he lighted a small bull’s-eye lantern which he produced from his bag. ‘Throwing the rays of the lantern before him, so as to save himself from stumbling over any obstacle which might chance to be in his path, he passed forward into one of the back rooms, where he felt that he would be still safer from the observation of any chance passer-by. ‘Then opening his bag again he brought forth from its recesses a black wig and a thick black moustache, which had formed part of his ‘‘ make-up ” when playing the character of Captain Hawtree in a scene from Caste at Wenlock Towers. The wig he proceeded to draw on over his own closely- cropped head of light hair; while the moustache was readily fixed in its place by the aid of a little spirit-gum. His next proceeding was to substitute for the low-crowned felt hat he had been wearing a high- crowned opera hat which he had brought with him, shut up, in his bag. Then having tied a thick white muffler round his neck, he felt that his disguise was complete. Leaving his bag in a corner of the unfinished house, but taking his lantern with him after having turned on the dark slide, Harold Dare issued forth, and after listening intently for a few seconds he crossed the waste ground to the high road, and then set off at a rapid pace in the direction of Stilwater. The mail-cart between Stilwater and Barrowcliff had been driven by one man for thirty years. His name was John Pegram, and he had now turned his sixtieth birthday. John’s jolly, rubicund visage was known to everybody, and everybody averred that he was no one’s enemy but his own. It was universally believed, however, that John could drive better when he was “half seas over” than when‘he was perfectly sober ; and as for his old bay mare, you had only to put her head in the direction you wanted her to go and she required no driv- ing at all. CONNIE OOO KS (E(©)