Beadle's Dime Novels No. 96: Little Moccasin — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

A DISTANT ROAR, 2 17 “Yes, governor, certainly—nothing would be pleasanter on such a night as this,’ he whimpered. “ Have done with your nonsense, Charley Frost, once for all!” said the captain, with a serious, almost threatening look, for he saw that Perry was in no mood for trifling, and the major seemed greatly disturbed. ‘It is near midnight, boys, and we ought to be all abed and asleep; for to-morrow we shall have our hands full, and if we don’t get the roads broke. before it comes a thaw, our winter’s work will foot up small, you may depend.” } “Come out at the leetle eend o’ the horn, hey, cap’n?” growled Hannaford. Without answering this inquiry, Gage got up and went to the door and pushed it open, and stood still and listened. The blackness overhead was awful, the stillness at first op- pressive, the huge straight pines, many of them running up nearly two hundred feet, and barkless and branchless half the way, as if thunder-blasted from their birth, were like pillars towering into the sky and propping the firmament. After listening awhile, his countenance changed suddenly, and he made a sign to the major and Perry, and after they had joined him, just outside the door, he asked them, in a low voice, if they heard any thing. | Both stood still for a few moments, with their hands be- hind their ears, and at last the major spoke—the Old Forester, as he was sometimes called, though far from being an old man—and said, in a voice which did not reach the boys inside, though they were all listening till they had grown restless and fidgety, “‘ Yes, 1 hear the rush and roar of watersas I never heard them but once before in all my life.” Perry turned suddenly upon him, but said nothing, as he continued : | “ And they have been roaring in my ears ever since.” “ Ah-ha!’? said Perry. And again these two men stood eyeing each other in a way that seemed to trouble the captain more than he chose to acknowledge, even to himself. Meanwhile there was a low, half-smothered conversation going on within, which threatened to break out into some- thing like a dispute. | “T tell ye, I know!” said Charley, ‘“ Goodness me!” connicloooks.com | ail