That is how, a week later, all the South was stirred over the strange return of a fortune to the different corporations from which it had been taken, accompanied by a drawling note from Jack Bracken saying he returned ill-gotten gain to live a better life. It ended laconically: "_An' maybe you'd better go an' do likewise._" The dim starlight was shining faintly through the cracks of the outlaw's future home when the old man showed him in. "Now, Jack," he said, "it's nearly mornin' an' the old woman may be wild an' raise sand. But learn to lay low an' shoe hosses. She was bohn disapp'inted--maybe because she wa'n't a boy," he whispered. There was a whinny outside, in a small paddock, where a nearby stable stood: "That's Cap'n Tom's horse," said the old man--"I mus' go see if he's hungry." "I've kept his horse these ten years, hopin' maybe he'd come back agin. It's John Paul Jones--the thoroughbred, that the old General give him." "I remember him," said Jack. The great bloodlike horse came up and rubbed his nose on the old man's shoulder. "Hungry, John Paul?" "It's been a job to get feed fur him, po' as I've been--but--but--he's Cap'n Tom's. You kno'--" "An' Cap'n Tom will ride him yet," said Jack. "Do you believe it, Jack?" asked the old man huskily "God be praised!" That Saturday night was one never to be forgotten by others beside Jack Bracken and the old preacher of Cottontown. When Helen Conway, after supper, sought her drunken father and learned that he really intended to have Lily and herself go into the cotton mills, she was crushed for the first time in her life. An hour later she sent a boy with a note to The Gaffs to Harry Travis. He brought back an answer that made her pale with wounded love and grief. Not even Mammy Maria knew why she had crept off to bed. But in the night the old woman heard sobs from the young girl's room where she and her sister slept. "What is it, chile?" she asked as she slipped from her own cot in the adjoining little room and went in to Helen's. The girl had been weeping all night--she had no mother--no one to whom she could unbosom her heart--no one but the old woman who had nursed her from her infancy. This kind old creature sat on the bed and held the girl's sobbing head on her lap and stroked her cheek. She knew and understood--she asked no questions: "It isn't that I must work in the mill," she sobbed to the old woman--"I can do that--anything to help out--but--but--to think that Harry loves me so little as to give me up for--for--that." "Don't cry, chile," said Mammy soothingly--"It ain't registered that you gwine wuck in that mill yit--I ain't made my afferdavit yit." "But Harry doesn't love me--Oh, he doesn't love me," she wept. "He would not give me up for anything if he did."