Beadle's Dime Novels No. 35: East and West — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

82 THE BEAUTY OF WILLARD’S MILL. with them. They are unscrupulous, hard-fisted and design- _ ing. They don’t care about the fact that I have worked eight years getting my mill so that it begins to pay me something, - and furnished them lumber to build houses over their worth- less heads. They’ve gone and set their town down on a little flat ground, between the place where the creek comes out of the bluffs, on one side, and a chain of sloughs on the other; and then, because it’s overflowed in a heavy rain, they want to pull my dam out! J could show them how to drain the water into the creek—but no—they don’t want the trouble to do drainage. They must sell their town lots—and so when men complain of their being wet, they tell ’em it’s Willard’s dam that does the mischief. They'll keep that story going, and get the people so excited about it the first time there comes a flood, and their cellars run full of water, that they’ll come down here to tear out my dam. ‘But they'll never do it while I’m living. Let them come and go at it, if they think best! The boys and I can put their heads under water with the pikes, fast as they set to work at that business. No, they’ll never destroy my hard-earned property—so help me God !” When Mr. Willard had finished this pointed little speech, he got up, walked back and forth once or twice across the room; then brought some wine; and lastly asked Constance what he should do with her pony. “ Oh, keep him, to be sure! When I come back, some time, I shall want him to ride; and until then you can do what you please with him.” . “ And yours too, Minnie ?—do you want that runaway and estray kept for another adventure ?” “Indeed, yes,” said Minnié; “I should keep him as a reminder of a certain ‘ making up.’” “ Minnie is right !—and thus I drink to her pony,” returned Stewart. : The greatest grief Minnie had in leaving, was that she could not say farewell to Fletcher; who, being gone up to St. Pierre, sketching the upper Missouri, did not even know of her intended departure. What would he think to find her gone ?—and would he come to New York this winter? Nat chose to take leave of Minnie without a “cloud of comiclbooks.com 7