Beadle's Dime Novels No. 38: The Wrong Man — page 77: what you’re looking at

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

PLANS FOR THE MORROW. 29 clamor around him, busied his mind in an endeayor to frame some plan of rendering a service to Dudley, equal to the injury he had been the unwitting means of doing him. Persons at length came into the bar-room to remove the body to another part of the house, in order to prepare it for burial. In handling it, a leather strap, which had been ling from the feet of the corpse, was accidentally ioosened, and fell, unobserved by all except the quick eye of Dodge, upon the floor. He rose from his seat and walked across the room, contrivfhg, as he passed, slyly to kick it underneath the table on which the body had been lying. The company began to disperse soon after the removal of the object which had drawn them together, and dropping off one by one, Nathan Dodge was, in a few minutes, the only person left in the bar-room. Picking up the strap and thrusting it in his pocket, he also left the tavern and repaired to his lodgings, a certain pleased feeling giving great elasticity to his step, as he reflected that he bad succeeded in withdrawing ne important article of evidence, which might have been used to fix the imputed crime upon Dudley. During the open and somewhat noisy discussion that had been carried on in the bar-room, the same event had furnished the topic of low and earnest discourse to a smaller number of yersons assembled in another apartment. Among these was ~ Hugh Overton, the brother of the deceased, a young, red- headed man, a lawyer who had recently established himself in the village, and two or three others. Various plans for pro- curing such evidence as might lead to a conviction of the per- son who had deprived the hunter of life were proposed; and among the measures determined on, it was agreed that a party should set out early in the morning to examine the margin ot the river, near the place where the body had been found, with ~- a view to discover the “trail” of the murderer. Charles Dudley rose early on the following morning, and in a frame of mind somewhat resembling the changed aspect of the weather. The wind had shifted to the north-east during ) the night, and dense, damp clouds nc-y rolled through the air _ with a sluggish motion, their drooping folds showing they were heavily cnarged with rain. The colored leaves were comliclooks.comn