He lived with her until he had spent all her money, and swindled her infant out of his inheritance, and then he had robbed her of her jewels and deserted her.
About the same time a smuggling craft, unsuspected as such by the authorities, had entered the port of Norfolk, sailing under the British flag.
Mr. Horace Blondelle, going to take passage in her, recognized the captain and the crew as his own old confederates.
As he was quite ready for new adventures, he joined them then and there. The ship sailed the next day. And the next week it was wrecked on the coast of Virginia.
The lives of the captain and crew, and also the money and jewels, the silks and spirits they had on board, were all saved. They reached the land in safety.
There a new scheme was formed in the busy brain of Mr. Blondelle. Accident had revealed to him the fact that the little Gentiliska, the orphan daughter of a dead comrade, was the heiress of a great Virginian manor, long unclaimed. He made up his mind to go and look up the estate, marry the heiress, and claim her rights.
Without revealing his whole plan to his companions, he persuaded them to accompany him to the neighborhood.
There is a freemasonry among thieves that enables them to recognize each other even at a first meeting.
Blondelle and his band no sooner reached the neighborhood of the Black Mountain, than they strengthened their forces by the addition of all the local outlaws who were at large.
They made their head-quarters first at the old deserted "Haunted Chapel." They penetrated into the vault beneath it, and there discovered the clue to the labyrinth of caverns under the mountain that henceforth became their stronghold.