Beadle's Dime Novels No. 38: The Wrong Man — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

50 THE WRONG MAN. step. In vain Lucy opened her favorite volume, and endear. ored to quiet her perturbation by reading passages which had often exercised a tranquilizing influence. The book had lost its wonted power. Her eye dwelt upon the page, but a thou- sand shifting emotions swelled in her bosom—a thousand fan- cies floated through her mind. She laid it aside, and, invited by the balmy southern breeze, which came to her fraught with the sweets of her own garden, took down her bonnet from its accustomed nook, and wandered forth into the open air. The yellow light of the sinking sun gave additional richness to the autumn drapery of the fores ; and as Lucy pursued a little footpath which wound round the northern brow of the bluff, the prospect which opened to her view on that side was one that, to an eye less familiar with its beauties, or less abstracted from the realities around, could not but have fur- - nished a pleasing object of contemplation. Beneath her, the Ohio, sleeping between its banks, gave an air of delicious re- pose to the landscape which it mirrored. The forest, on the opposite side, leaning over the grassy brink, as if to view the reflection of its own gay and many-colored foliage in the stream —the little islands that here and there dotted the glassy sur- face—and fleecy clouds floating at intervals along a sky slightly tinged with a faint golden haze—these were but a few of the features that combined to give inexpressible loveliness to the scene. But the mind of Lucy was too much absorbed with its own thoughts to heed the objects around her, or to listen to the flood of melody which innumerable warblers were pouring on the evening air. Her soul was wrapt in visions of the future, _ and a thousand vague fears and ineffable hopes thrilled through her heart. The man to whom her faith was pledged, and her hand was so soon to be united—would he be always true, always tender? Their life—would it glide, like the stream before her, smoothly to its end, or would it be shaded with clouds and ruffled with storms? The crowded and busy scenes to which she would probably soon be removed—weuld that world equal the world of her imaginings? Should she | there find objects on which her heart might repose, which would win her affections and deserve her esteem? And oh! mote than all, the love that had grown up in the forest~ CommiclooOoks.corn a ee a ee