“I cannot go to bed until I have written to you, so you must forgive me if I disturb you, and at an unseemly time.  Indeed, you must also forgive me if, in trying to do what is right, I err in saying too much or too little.  The fact is that I am quite upset and unnerved by all that has happened in this terrible night.  I find it difficult even to write; my hands shake so that they are not under control, and I am trembling all over with memory of the horrors we saw enacted before our eyes.  I am grieved beyond measure that I should be, however remotely, a cause of this horror coming on you.  Forgive me if you can, and do not think too hardly of me.  This I ask with confidence, for since we shared together the danger—­the very pangs—­of death, I feel that we should be to one another something more than mere friends, that I may lean on you and trust you, assured that your sympathy and pity are for me.  You really must let me thank you for the friendliness, the help, the confidence, the real aid at a time of deadly danger and deadly fear which you showed me.  That awful man—­I shall see him for ever in my dreams.  His black, malignant face will shut out all memory of sunshine and happiness.  I shall eternally see his evil eyes as he threw himself into that well-hole in a vain effort to escape from the consequences of his own misdoing.  The more I think of it, the more apparent it seems to me that he had premeditated the whole thing—­of course, except his own horrible death.

“Perhaps you have noticed a fur collar I occasionally wear.  It is one of my most valued treasures—­an ermine collar studded with emeralds.  I had often seen the nigger’s eyes gleam covetously when he looked at it.  Unhappily, I wore it yesterday.  That may have been the cause that lured the poor man to his doom.  On the very brink of the abyss he tore the collar from my neck—­that was the last I saw of him.  When he sank into the hole, I was rushing to the iron door, which I pulled behind me.  When I heard that soul-sickening yell, which marked his disappearance in the chasm, I was more glad than I can say that my eyes were spared the pain and horror which my ears had to endure.

“When I tore myself out of the negro’s grasp as he sank into the well- hole; I realised what freedom meant.  Freedom!  Freedom!  Not only from that noisome prison-house, which has now such a memory, but from the more noisome embrace of that hideous monster.  Whilst I live, I shall always thank you for my freedom.  A woman must sometimes express her gratitude; otherwise it becomes too great to bear.  I am not a sentimental girl, who merely likes to thank a man; I am a woman who knows all, of bad as well as good, that life can give.  I have known what it is to love and to lose.  But you must not let me bring any unhappiness into your life.  I must live on—­as I have lived—­alone, and, in addition, bear with other woes the memory