Publisher's Synopsis
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. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV. SIN VICTUS. 'What?'--that question at the close of the first chapter was asked in a tone of desperate agony by the boy calling himself 'Sin Vincent, ' alias Edgar Johnson. As he asked it, he reeled and staggered and stumbled, and would have fallen had not the old sexton caught him by the arm. The sexton had told him how his master gradually sank and died, overpowered by his son's expulsion from school--that the son had disappeared and never been heard of--that his mother had almost lost her reason by all she had to bear--and then Johnson asked for the name of this family. The answer utterly overwhelmed him. At last the conviction of his sin was forced upon him--that long system of sin, 'vincent' hitherto, 'victus' at last. Suddenly was he brought face to face with the awful consequences of his cruel wickedness, while his heart still quailed under the terrors of the haunted house seen in the shadowy gloaming of late summer twilight. Johnson felt his very life-blood freeze, and all consciousness deserted him. This had occurred half-way between the gate and the house of Bracken Dene. Old John was not equal to the effort of carrying the boy. He laid him down gently on the turf, and hobbled up to the house, and asked the man-servant to come and help carry him. Between them both Johnson was brought up, and the housekeeper lent her services in getting him to bed. Then she went to tell his uncle what had happened. Mr. St. Vincent had passed the golden bridge of life. He had never married, and was styled by some of his acquaintances a ' crusty old bachelor.' He was a martyr to gout, and his sufferings had made him irritable and fidgety. His only sister had married an officer in the Ceylon police-force, and their son, Edgar Johnson, .
