Not alone the money; a year, or two years, of labor would no doubt
replace what he had lost. But he had seen, in imagination, his mother's
feverish anxiety at an end; household help procured, to lighten her
over-heavy toil; the possibility of her release from some terrible
obligation brought nearer, as he hoped and trusted, and with it the
strongest barrier broken down which rose between him and Martha Deane.
All these things which he had, as it were, held in his hand, had been
stolen from him, and the loss was bitter because it struck down to the
roots of the sweetest and strongest fibres of his heart. The night
veiled his face, but if some hotter drops than those of the storm were
shaken from his cheek, they left no stain upon his manhood.

The sense of outrage, of personal indignity, which no man can appreciate
who has not himself been violently plundered, added its sting to his
miserable mood. He thirsted to avenge the wrong; Barton's words
involuntarily came back to him,--"I'll know no peace till the villain
has been strung up!" Barton! How came Sandy Flash to know that Barton
intended to send money by him? Had not Barton himself declared that the
matter should be kept secret? Was there some complicity between the
latter and Sandy Flash? Yet, on the other hand, it seemed that the
highwayman believed that he was robbing Gilbert of Barton's money. Here
was an enigma which he could not solve.

All at once, a hideous solution presented itself. Was it possible that
Barton's money was to be only _apparently_ stolen--in reality returned
to him privately, afterwards? Possibly the rest of the plunder divided
between the two confederates? Gilbert was not in a charitable mood; the
human race was much more depraved, in his view, than twelve hours
before; and the inference which he would have rejected as monstrous,