Beadle's Dime Novels No. 95 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

10 | EPH PETERS, On the morning of the twenty-first of August, 1755, an old woman was walking on the bank of the Mohawk. She was small in stature, and was still further dwarfed by a bad stoop. She walked with a staff, stooping from time to time to gather herbs, which she, put in a sort of pouch at her side as she took them up. <A physiognomist would have'said at once that the woman had a bad face. Her nose was hooked like a vul- ture’s beak ; and there was a certain rapacious quickness in her eye which did not bode good. She moved about with mar- velous swiftness, for one. apparently so decrepit, muttering to | herself at intervals as she continued her work. A. footstep in the woods startled her, and she sprung behind a bunch of tall weeds, which completely concealed her from ‘view. But she had ameiy been seen, and a renee voice called out : “Tt won’t do, Mother Ann. You will haveto jump quicker than that if you expect to escape the red-skins.” An active young fellow, evidently the owner of the voice, issued from the woods, presenting a lithe, compact form, though not large, clad in the uniform of the regiment of Colonel Wil- liams. He carried a musket, slung across his shoulder, and looked somewhat jaded by a long march: The face was a good one, open and fearless. He laughed pleasantly as the — person. called Mother Ann came from her place of concealment, © scowling at him angrily. ‘‘ You have lost none of your beauty, good mother,” he said. “ Why will you persist in turning milk sour by such thunder- storm looks ?” “Do you tramp the forest still,.then, Ronald Minette i she said. “Have you not learned that long tongue of yours better manners since I saw you last ?” “ Not at all, good mother. You were pleased to reprimand me somewhat sharply when we last met—why I can not: tell —and commanded me not to cross your path again. All that is nonsense. The paths in the woods are free, and you have no power to bar them against me.” ps The old woman’s eyes blazed. She took a single step to- . ward him, and lifted a skinny finger. He dropped the butt of his gun indolently upon the ground, and leaned upon it. The bent figure of the crone seemed to expand and grow taller, as connicloooks.com