Beadle's Dime Novels No. 138: Tim, the Scout — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

THE TEMPTER AND THE TEMPTED. 59 “T might have known that you would hant me down, James Wilson,” replied Neal, in an agonized voice. ‘Prove your assumed or real friendship. Take this knife and kill me. Or ‘stay; you have a pistol in your pocket; you always have. Shoot me through the head, and I give you not only forgive- ness, but a blessing for the deed, : “Pish, man; kill you! Why should you die at all? Do you think I am here to betray you? Did I not always stand your friend ?” “Tf it is friendship to uphold a man in evil courses, to be always at his elbow, to whisper evil counsel in his ear, to lure him on until he commits a crime, and then to shift all respon- sibility from your own shoulders—why, then, you were always .my friend. But I know you, James Wilson. Why could you not Iet me rest? I had eut all connection with the hate- ful past, and under a new name, haye been striving to live such a life as to make, in some measure, atonement for the one evil deed of my life—for the crime which will follow me, _ and seems to demand its punishment on earth. Do me the justice to believe that I care nothing for myself Tt concerns the future of my child, my beautiful Lizzie. ILow can I tell her what it is that drove me to this solitude. She thinks it misfortune, nothing more. TI thank God now that her. mother was dead before the fatal hour.” “Tt was the sight of her face which first put me on your track, Walter,’ said Wilson. ‘ When I first saw her, it seem- ed a reproduction of a lost face. Icould not place it; I could not remember. I racked my brains in vain. Do you know how I found you out at last? There isan old Bible in the room where I slept last night. I don’t know how it happened, but I opened it, and found the family record, which you had ren- dered illegible. But the name on the first page, written in pale ink, had faded, so that, in some way, you passed it over, I could not read it, but I have in my possession two liquids which will make plain the oldest writing. It. brings back the original color of the ink. From a fancy, more than any thing else, I tried these liquids on that indistinct name, and hore it is.” He took out the se satin pouch and_showed the other the name written on the torn leaf. Walter Rashleigh, for tliat conmnliclooks.com