Beadle's Dime Novels No. 3: Myra, the Child of Adoption — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

t 66 MYRA, TIIE CHILD OF ADOPTION. a faint smell of burnt paper, and that was all the poor old negro ever saw of his master’s will. The old man went back to the chamber, knowing too well that his mission was at an end. He knelt down by that death-couch trembling like a culprit, and heart-sick from a consciousness of his own impotence. “Oh, master, master! forgive me—forgive me!” cried the gray-headed old servant, bending his wrinkled forehead to the hands he had clasped upon the death-couch. “Forgive. me that I stayed to cry when I should have obeyed the last order you can ever give , the old man. I have seen, I have heard—but who will be- lieve me, master? Am I not a slave ?” “A slave? Yes; go hence, and forever!” cried a stern voice in the room; “ you who have no more discretion than thus to talk with the dead.” The old man arose and stood up; his keen eyes dwelt firmly upon Ross, and with his right hand he drew the cover- ing from the dead. There was something noble in the look and attitude of that old gray-headed negro as he confronted the false friend, the household traitor, who might yet have al- most the power of life and death over him. “ He is my master; I will not leave him,” said the old man firmly. “ You may whip me, you may kill me, but I will never leave him till he is buried. I rocked him in his cradle, I will lay him in his grave. Then sell me, if you like; no matter what becomes of the old man when his master is in the grave.” And turning.away with a look of unutterable woe, the old servant cast himself by the death-couch, crying out, “ My master! oh, my master !” A few weeks after, the old man was sold and sent away to a far-off plantation, for he was a part of the property which Daniel Clark had left, and according to the old will, the only one ever found, Ross was the executor of the estate, and had a right to sell the poor old man, e comiclooks.conmn