His Other Wife: A Novel — page 174: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

166 A DUMB SCOUT. But no signs of boat or boatman were to be seen, and only the piteous and incessant whines of the dog con- nected Faith Hilary’s disappearance with this lonely, wild spot. But these were ‘‘confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ” to the conviction in Warren’s mind that the girl had been decoyed away from her friends by some selfish or vicious caprice of the unscrupulous creole—whether for mere idle pastime or with a darker purpose, Warren had not allowed himself to decide. The thought that now suggested itself to him caused the flush that exercise had brought to his cheek to fade away, and leave his face tortured as with a deadly pain. What if, in a mad freak, the creole had persuaded Faith to trust herself to his care in one of the frail skiffs used by the hardy black fishermen, and, as most likely, some fatal accident had befallen them in the eddying currents of the stream, where the tide-water met the more placid flow of the river? Dreadful as this thought was, Warren seemed to breathe more freely after it than when his fancy had brooded on the more revolting possibilities born of his mistrust of the creole’s honor, which he knew to be so darkly tainted with that kind of infamy of which society takes so little account where the offender is a man/ After much persuasion, Warren induced the dog to return with him to the steamboat landing behind them. Here he obtained a small scull and a negro oarsman, and, Eomicbooks: co