This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ... XX VICTORY Helen's note, which he read by the light of the flagman's lantern, while Roper and the old negro, Jerry, waited for him with the two horses, produced in Hilliard's mind only a profound feeling of thankfulness that she had left Eastwood plantation. He put aside the incoherent farewell it contained as not worth a moment's consideration, satisfied that Mrs. Wingate, removing her daughter precipitately from his reach, had also insisted, for some reason, upon such a farewell. As if the width of the world could separate him from Helen! As if Helen could really wish to put him out of her life! Unless--unless she had heard the story of his birth and his banishment, and had been repelled by it; unless she had learned, through Mrs. Deerford, of his denunciation of Allan, and held him to blame for lack of brotherly feeling; unless she thought him hard and cruel to his--mother! unless, unless--As he galloped on, now ahead of his companions, now far behind them, feverishly anxious to be alone, the rain beating his wan face, his square jaws set, his black brows drawn together, he might have been the ghost of that Hilliard who thirty years before had sped over these lonely roads by night! "He is hard hit by something outside of Deerford's deviltry, poor fellow!" sighed Roper, forgetting that he was not alone. "Dat he is, marster," said Jerry, who rode at his elbow, leading Deerford's spirited horse. "I knows de signs. Marse Roy is hamstrenk!" Jerry was sent on to Eastwood with a single word, already agreed upon, by way of a message, to Deerford's mother. Roper accompanied Hilliard to St. Denis. The latter had hardly reached his room in the village hotel when the deputysheriff appeared in the doorway. He carried a traveling-bag. "I'm off, ...