Beadle's Dime Novels No. 38: The Wrong Man — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

100 ag THE WRONG MAN. case of a sudden assault of the savages. These locks, it happened, were precisely alike, so that the keys fitted both indiscriminately ; but this circumstance had entirely faded from the memory, not only of such of the settlers as might once have known it, but even of Sedley himself, until recalled to mind by his thoughts being earnestly exercised in an en- deavor to form some plun of releasing the prisoner. Whatever was the nature and object of Cato’s errand to our hero, it was not dispatched without a considerable delay. He at length reissued from the block-house, closed the door carefully, and turned to pursue his way home. Several times he paused, and looked at the bundle (which he still carried) with a perplexed air, as if his mind were grappling with some subject it could not altogether master. All at once, a gleam of intelligence lighted up his black features, denoting that he had hit upon a lucky thought. “Hah! dat’s it—dat’s it!” said he, speaking to himself; “dat will be sure to trow ’em on de wrong scent. I'll de- range it all now, and dey shall see de nigger knows a t’ing or two, as well as de res’ of ’em.” That night, an hour or two after Sedley and his niece had retired to rest, the door of a smaller log-cabin, which answered the purpose of a kitchen to the main structure, might have been seen to open, and honest Cato, stealing cautiously out, once more took his way toward the village. The moon was partially hid behind a cluster of clouds, now scudding back before a pleasant western breeze to the quarter whence they had lately issued. Enough light shone through the intervals, however, to have betrayed the motions of the negro, had any eye been watching him. In one hand he car- ried a spade, and in the other the same bundle with which he had lately returned from the block-house. The night was fast melting into morning when he came back, and he dragged his limbs after him in a way that showed his expedition had been attended with fatigue. But as he knelt down at the kitchen-hearth, and blew the smoul- dering embers into a flame, the red light that fell on his countenance revealed a pleased and somewhat consequential expression, el my satisfactorily accemplished the object of his expedition. ' Conic dooolks.conn ~_