Beadle's Dime Novels No. 96: Little Moccasin — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

A SHRIEK AND A SHOT. - 73 Another shriek !—and yet another !—and then, as Fletcher sprung forward in the direction of the sound, without regard to his own safety, they died away in the stormy distance, with a wail that chilled his very blood. But what was he to do? It was no longer possible for him to follow it further— and the ravine itself was getting SO clogged with snow, that he was in danger of losing all the way-marks. If he returned to camp, all traces would be lost, not only of the Little Moccasin; but of his own footsteps, and he might wander—God only knows aaa a the storm and darkness. While debating with himself, he had settled the question in a& measure, by turning his face homeward, and asking himself what the girl was to him ?—and why he, or Gage, or anybody else about there, should trouble himself to hunt her up? Then he heard the report of a rifle a long way off down the gorge, and in the direction the Iroquois chief had taken. ‘Then there was a wild whoop !—and all was still—still as the grave itself. There was no longer any hesitation with Fletcher. A ter- rible tragedy had been represented almost before his eyes, and how would he answer it to Gage—how to his own con- science—if he should turn and flee? Filled with secret awe, which the circumstances might well account for, he began ‘to believe in the leading of a new Providence; and felt, as he lifted his eyes to the darkening heavens, that he had no choice left, Come what would—he was resolved to know the worst. Gathering himself up with a newer and higher impulse than he had started with, and dashing ahead with all his might, he soon reached the ravine, and after a rapid survey of the neighborhood, got his bearings afresh, in spite of the snow, found the lodge—a trapper’s cabin—-where he had no doubt, from all he saw, and all he had been told by Gage, that the Indian girl and the Forester had found a refuge, when both disappeared so suddenly. It was built under the projecting roots of two or three large hemlocks, which over- hung the edge of the ravine, and at another season of the year, when the foliage was out and the wild vines in full feather, might have been overlooked even by the experienced eye of a hunter. 3 conicloooks.com