Beadle's Dime Novels No. 37: Godbold, the Spy — page 59: what you’re looking at

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

THE STRATAGEM AND. ESCAPE. 5? door that she distinctly heard the bludgeon they had used full apon the floor. Again and again those awful sounds reverb- erated with thrilling fullness through the woods, as if they recorded some frightful catastrophe. Nothing was heard in the house but the echoes of these cries, until the painful quietness was proken by the hoarse voice of one of the villains exclaiming, in consternation : “Tps the Mohawk whoop. They are on the trail Sor blood, and no doubt are after us—let us get out, boys, and see their numbers that we may know what we've got to do.” The outer door soon opened, and Alice heard the sound of heavy feet, as if the thieves had passed into the forest to the approaching foe. Presently there was another source of alarm, for the figure of a man appeared at the win- dow, and without uttering a word dropped into the room. Poor Alice rushed in affright to the most distant corner, whence she perceived, with delight, the moonbeams shining upon the silver head of her venerable protector. “ We must leave this house,” he said; “’tis one ot danger.” He unbarred the door, and signed to Alice to follow him into the room where they had supped. There still stood the crone, with glaring eye and savage expression in her face, “J come to thank you for your protection,” said the old “and as the night is fine we'll continue our journey.” “ Foolish old man,” exclaimed the woman in a fury, plac- ing herself in the door-way, “are you no wiser in your gray hairs? Don’t you know that to venture beyond this threshold is death? Them are the whoops o’ the Indians in search for scalps ?” : Alice shuddered at this allusion to the fate which awaited her and her aged defender, and was about to urge him not to tempt this danger, when he said, addressing his host: “ Whatever the peril may be, we'll meet 1t in the forest.” He then attempted to move forward; butethe woman, with a contemptuous look, spread her bulky and masculine form yet more defiantly before the door, when the old man, with the flash of the lion in his eye, and an impulsive vigor in his “Out o’ the way, you hag!” and seizing her by the throat, he jashed her with fearful force upon the floor. comicldoolkks.conn