Beadle's Dime Novels No. 127: Bald Eagle — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

RIDING, 69 The stars of a clear summer night looked softly downward as Montagnie moved adown the valley, and all the air was so Still that the sound of his horse’s hoofs broke upon the senses With a preternatural loudness at once startling and annoying, hemmed in, as he was, by the converging hills, which upon either side presented an almost perpendicular wall. From their top and sides the stiff pines shot upward, gloomy and unyielding, their angular outlines affording no relief to an ex- cited fancy. The rapid torrent of the Ramapo rushed onward in its compressed bed, and now and then ascreech-owl, startled by the unwonted sound of steps at such an hour, flapped his noiseless wings and sought a deeper shade. Forcibly did the appropriate imagery of Scripture arise to his mind, as thus in Solitude and at midnight he moved along this narrow defile : “ Yea, though I walk through the dark valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” Looking upward, he perceived the stars begin to pale in the sky, and now was the time to increase his speed as he neared the ramparts. He put spurs to his horse, and then checked him again, for he caught the echo of hoofs galloping behind’ him, Already the light gleamed through the termination of the valley, and he heard the stirring sounds of the garrison, Vigilant in their early duty. Looking backward, the obscur- ity prevented him from distinguishing the formof the stranger, whether friend or foe, and he had hardly time to reflect upon either when the horseman dashed by him with a speed that baffled pursuit, and in a guise to shock the coolest blood. A tall, slender woman gave the rein to a furious white charger, Which leapt and snorted, threatening to unseat the rider, who, nevertheless, yielding to every flexure of the animal, seemed rather to enjoy than be terrified at her frightful onward speed. Indeed, it would seem as if both horse and rider were at that precise point which established an entire mesmeric sym- pathy between them, the bones of the two mechanically swing- ing in concert, and the white locks of the one tossing just as did the white mane of the other, so that, at a distance, they not unaptly suggested the idea of the waving, shadowy outline of the last of the Centaurs. Montagnie reigned up his own horse, fearing to accelerate the 127 3 comicbooks.com