Beadle's Dime Novels No. 96: Little Moccasin — page 77: what you’re looking at

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

FRETTING AND FUMING. 79 CHAPTER VIII. AND NOW, WHAT NEXT? In the night, while our two hunters were keeping watch by turns, and talking over the business in hand, there came up another of those terrible storms of sleet and rain, without no- tice, which are so frequent along our north-eastern frontier, and which always make a part of the “ January thaw tact as, sooner or later, we always have the equinoctial storm, you know. Notwithstanding the impatience of Gage, and by this time, of Fletcher, who began to take a deeper interest in the dread- ful drama, they found it impossible to continue their search, before a change of vine the north should form a-crust ; otherwise they would not be able to make their way through the deep slosh beyond a mile an hour at the most, and with the greatest possible exertion. Snow-shoes, if they had them, would be of no use; but th ey had left them behind in camp, and it was too late to go back for them. Hour after hour they fretted and fumed—Gage pacing the trodden floor to and fro, like a wild beast in a menagerie, and Fletcher trying to sleep, while the rain came pouring down upon the roof like a water-spout, from the overhanging roots of the huge hemlocks, under which they were nestled; occa- sionally going to the door to look out—or getting a glimpse of the sky through a hole which had been left for the smoke, and then settling down again, with a grow], upon his bed of spruce-branches. At last the wind changed ; and changed, too, as suddenly as the rain-storm had burst upon them, reminding Gage, he said, of that awful night which his father used to tell of, when Washington was wholly in the power of his enemy while re- treating “through the Jerseys, not being able to move his guns or even to march his troops, on account of the deep mud; when all at once, the wind shifted and the great high road be- came as hard as a pavement, and within a few bours, he and his whole,army were safe. comiclooks.com