Beadle's Dime Novels No. 97: The Doomed Hunter — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

10 THE DOOMED HUNTER. 4 gis good water-privilege which could be employed for the vart- ous purposes requiring “power.” Selecting a rich bottom, they built a settlement, surrounded by hills upon nearly every side. The site had been named “ Forest Valley,” and certainly no appellation could have been more characteristic and appro- priate. Several years had passed, during which the settlement grew and throve. At the time when our story opens it contained nearly twenty dwellings, a rude church, with blacksmith-shop and store. | The latter was such an institution as the needs of the commu- ‘nity demanded—where furs and the few productions of the forest-homes found a ready exchange for powder and lead, bad whisky and Indian trinkets, besides such articles as were needed by the settlers in their more peaceful pursuits. The store, and, indeed, the majority of the buildings in For- est Valley, belonged to a person named Jehonikam Andrews— a man who had noticed the fine points of the settlement, and at once invested ‘his all in such ways as nearly to monopolize the active power of the place. Nothwithstanding the facts that his prices were ehormous, and that various stories cireu- lated in regard to his weights and measures, there was no course left to the settlers but to patronize him. The mill had been built by his capital, and the lumber which it had turned into his hands had been employed:in the erection of new houses, all of which found ready occupants, even if Jchonikam’s prices and terms were slightly outrageous, Apart from his love of money and position, he was not con- sidered a bad citizen, and many little acts of kindness showed that good lurked Hetteath an almost miserly exterior. Indeed, with those who were independent of him Jehonikam ‘was chatty and sociable, disposed to laugh and joke with a hearty rélish. But all familiarity from those who were in his pow- er was nipped in the bud. The habitation in-which Andrews dwelt was @ small house ‘ situated near the “store.” His family consisted merely of a | pleasant, beautiful daughter, twenty years of age, Nancy An- — drews by name, and himself. His day was spent in’ the store and around the place, excepting only service hours on Sunday, Ccommiclbooks.conn