“I made my acknowledgments to the gentleman and left him.  The last chance was this chance—­and this had failed me.”

7.

“The thought that had once found its way into my mind already, now found its way back again, and never altogether left me from that time forth.  No deliverance for me but in death—­his death, or mine.

“I had it before me night and day; in chapel and out of chapel just the same.  I read the story of Jael and Sisera so often that the Bible got to open of itself at that place.

“The laws of my country, which ought to have protected me as an honest woman, left me helpless.  In place of the laws I had no friend near to open my heart to.  I was shut up in myself.  And I was married to that man.  Consider me as a human creature, and say, Was this not trying my humanity very hardly?

“I wrote to good Mr. Bapchild.  Not going into particulars; only telling him I was beset by temptation, and begging him to come and help me.  He was confined to his bed by illness; he could only write me a letter of good advice.  To profit by good advice people must have a glimpse of happiness to look forward to as a reward for exerting themselves.  Religion itself is obliged to hold out a reward, and to say to us poor mortals, Be good, and you shall go to Heaven.  I had no glimpse of happiness.  I was thankful (in a dull sort of way) to good Mr. Bapchild—­and there it ended.

“The time had been when a word from my old pastor would have put me in the right way again.  I began to feel scared by myself.  If the next ill usage I received from Joel Dethridge found me an unchanged woman, it was borne in strongly on my mind that I should be as likely as not to get my deliverance from him by my own hand.

“Goaded to it, by the fear of this, I humbled myself before my relations for the first time.  I wrote to beg their pardon; to own that they had proved to be right in their opinion of my husband; and to entreat them to be friends with me again, so far as to let me visit them from time to time.  My notion was, that it might soften my heart if I could see the old place, and talk the old talk, and look again at the well-remembered faces.  I am almost ashamed to own it—­but, if I had had any thing to give, I would have parted with it all, to be allowed to go back into mother’s kitchen and cook the Sunday dinner for them once more.

“But this was not to be.  Not long before my letter was received mother had died.  They laid it all at my door.  She had been ailing for years past, and the doctors had said it was hopeless from the first—­but they laid it all at my door.  One of my sisters wrote to say that much, in as few words as could possibly suffice for saying it.  My father never answered my letter at all.”

8.

“Magistrates and lawyers; relations and friends; endurance of injuries, patience, hope, and honest work—­I had tried all these, and tried them vainly.  Look round me where I might, the prospect was closed on all sides.