A man on his estate, renting a farm close to us, who was a Quaker, and very “strict” in his religious profession, had been for a long time grossly cheating him, relying, no doubt, on my poor brother’s deficient intellect.  But minds that are intellectually and in reason deficient, are often endowed with a large share of cunning and caution, especially in monetary affairs.  Edmund guessed, watched, and discovered; but when the proof was in his hands, his proceedings were characteristically peculiar.  He did not discharge the man, and have done with it; he retained him in his place, but seemed to take a—­let me say—­insane delight in exposing him to the religious circle in which he had been a star, and from which he was ignominiously expelled; and in heaping every possible annoyance and disgrace upon him that the circumstances admitted.  My dear, I think I should have preferred his wrath upon myself, to being the witness of my brother’s miserable exultation over the wretched man, Parker.  His chief gratification lay in the thought that, exquisite as were the vexations he heaped upon him, the man was obliged to express gratitude for his master’s forbearance as regarded the law.

“He said he should never forget my consideration for him till death!  Ha! ha!”

“My only puzzle,” I said, “is, what can induce him to stay with you.”

And then the storm turned upon me, Eleanor.

You will ask me, my dear, how, meanwhile, had Mr. Manners taken my letter of dismissal.  I know now, Nell, and so will not revive the mystery that then added weight to my distress.  He wrote me many letters,—­but I never saw one!

* * * * *

And now, dear friend, let me pause and gather courage to relate the terrible events of that sultry, horrible—­that accursed June.

CHAPTER II.

THE TERRIBLE JUNE.

It was about the middle of the month.  Harriet was spending some hours with a friend, Edmund was out, and I had been left alone all day for the first time since I came home.  I remember everything that happened with the utmost distinctness.  I spent the day chiefly in the garden, gathering roses for pot-pourri, being disinclined for any more reasonable occupation, partly by the thundery oppressiveness of the air, partly by a vague, dull feeling of dread that made me restless, and which was yet one of those phases of feeling in which, if life depended on an energetic movement, one must trifle.  In this mood, when the foreclouded mind instinctively shrinks from its own great troubles, little things assume an extraordinary distinctness.  I trode carefully in the patterns of the terrace pavement, counted the roses on the white bush by the dial (there were twenty-six), and seeing a beetle on the path, moved it to a bank at some distance.  There it crept into a hole, and such a wild, weary desire seized on me to creep after it and hide from what was coming, that—­I thought it wise to go in.