“Oh, Roma! your own glorious deliverer!” said Harcourt to himself, when the story was finished. “Now I can brave and bear the very worst that fate may have in store for me. Now you are free, queen!” He arose, and thanked Wilet for her information, gave each negro a dollar to buy “bakker,” and declining their urgent offers of supper and bed, he bade them good-night, and returned to the boat, near which the boatman was walking up and down, beating his breast and sides to keep warm. Half an hour’s rapid rowing took them to the mainland. Harcourt found his supper waiting at the hotel. He had just time to eat it, pay his bill, and catch the night train for West Virginia. CHAPTER V DOROTHY HARCOURT’S SECRET It was a wild, windy, blustering night in March when the train ran into Logwood. Will Harcourt was the only passenger who got off at that little way station, and he had no luggage but his carpetbag, which he carried in his hand. It was but eight o’clock, yet it was quite dark, and the station was deserted by all except the ticket clerk and the night porter. There was not a vehicle of any kind on the spot, nor, indeed, if there had been would Harcourt have availed himself of the convenience. Without even entering the station he stepped from the platform down to the country road, and set off on a brisk walk to Lone Lodge plantation. After his harassing journey in the cars, on a zigzag, cross-country route, during which he had had to change trains several times, and twice to wait hours for the connection, he felt it as a sort of relief to walk, to stretch his limbs along a direct road, on this dark, wintry, but bracing night. The wind was in his back, too, and rather helped than impeded his progress. An hour’s rapid walk, up and down hill, through woods, and across streams rudely bridged by logs, brought him in sight of Lone Lodge. Lights glanced between red curtains of the lower windows, showing that the family had not yet retired. But it was not to the house of his forefathers that he was going. Before he reached the acacia avenue, leading up to the front of it, he turned to the left and followed a little path down the wooded hill that brought him to the edge of the narrow, singing stream that ran half around the hut. He crossed it, and looked at the humble cot which had been his mother’s shelter ever since the loss of their home and fortune. There was a dim light shining through the little window of the kitchen, but none through that of his mother’s room. It struck him as strange and ill-omened, and now, as he came nearer, he saw that there was something the matter with the roof of the house, he could not see what. Full of misgiving, he went and rapped at the door. A frightened voice answered him: “Now, who dar? Wot yo’ want dis time ob night? I got gun! ’Deed is I! I shoot! ’deed will I!”