Beadle's Dime Novels No. 38: The Wrong Man — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

8 THE WRONG MAS. only articulate words, he turned his back upon the intruder, and began to reload his rifle. While thus employed, his stout form relieved against the glittering shect of water, he presented a figure of a western hunter (a race fast melting away before the advancing tide of civilization,) which might have furnished a study not unworthy the chisel of Crawford. In height he was upward of six feet, and seemed possessed of strength corresponding with his stat ure. His thin, skinny face was lighted by a pair of keen black eyes, which twinkled deep in their sockets with a rest- less motion ; and the corners of his large mouth had an habit- ial downward curvature, that gave a disagreeable expression 0 his countenance. A blue linsey-woolsey hunting-shirt, ‘trimmed with yellow fringe, was fastened at his waist by a leathern girdle, to which a bullet-pouch of otter-skin was attached in front, and a long knife, sheathed in a scabbard of skins curiously ornamented, depended from it at his side. Moccasins of buckskin protected his feet ; while his legs were clad in a garment of the same material, fitted tightly to their shape, and so laced at the side that a broad edge flapped about as he moved. The collar of his hunting-shirt was thrown open, displaying a brawny neck and chesf, the hue of which betokened long exposure to sun and storm. His sleeve, as it fell back from his arm, raised in the act of reloading his rifle, exposed enough of that muscular member to corroborate the idea of great strength which his general appearance created. Having finished loading his piece, he turned toward the person whose laugh had announced his : “Wal, my Yankee friend, what do you want?’ he de- manded, in a voice in which there was considerable asperity. “ What do I want, eh?” repeated the new-comer. “ Waal, now, Mr. Never-miss, that is a purty question for you to ask. Haven’t you ever heern tell of the attraction of admiration ?” “No,” replied the hunter, who hardly knew how to take the meaning of the Yankee. “ Waal, now, that’s what has drawed me down into these of your gun,-I hurries around to get a glimpse of its effect, ' The words of the speaker were uttered with e ComiclooolkSscom