Beadle's Dime Novels No. 37: Godbold, the Spy — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

ea 14 GIDEON GODBOLD. in them ’oods now looking at you, and if you go mto’em you'll die.” | ‘ “Ts that true?” said Horace, looking sternly at the woman, who now seemed to him a less gentle specimen of her sex than he had thought. “He may have some of his own mates up there,” said the woman, “but I know all the trails, and Pll lead you by & path hem’ill not think.” This sentiment, uttered with a voice that increased his ven- eration for the speaker, reassured him, and notwithstanding he thought it rather adventurous to enter the intricacies of the forest under such aged guidance, he resolved to proceed, tnd was about to move forward, when he perceived the woman, with an agility that almost belied her years, stoop and secure in an instant the gun of the absent stranger, who had now disappeared from view. But Horace rebuked this act, as an infringement upon an assurance which he would not com- promise. To his surprise, however, the woman did not sur- render the weapon until she beheld that he had still his pisto! in his hand, and then she did so most ungraciously, letting it fall upon the rock upon which the stranger had been sitting. by which there was great danger of its discharge, when” he or his noble animal must have received its contents. The hag, disappointed of her prize, ledthe way rather sul- lenly, supported by her oaken staff; but proceeding with more rapidity than she had done in her advance from the wood. The entrance of the forest was reached, and the grim obscurity into which Horace peered suggested to him what infamy might here be successfully masked. He, however, unhesitatingly followed his guide; but they had not traveled far, when the poor woman was attacked with a fit of cough- ing, 80 violent that it at once made Horace despair of any thing like a secret passage; and soon, mixed with the echoes of this noisy malady as they returned upon his ear, he dis- tinctly heard the report of fire-arms, when the coughing ceased, and the woman, who, he thotight, must be wholly exhausted, resumed her journey, apparently” reinvigorated. All again was hushed, There was no suurd but that of the woman as, she trod upon the leaves and fallen sticks, and of his hm 2 To avoid the branches, and be prepared for extremes, he conmic oxoolks.conn —