“Dear Cousin.—­(So wrote my Lord Ealing.) When this reaches you I shall be laid in silent tomb, where, perchance, I shall be more at peace than I have ever ben in a wurld, which either fitted me not, or I did not fit.  At all odds there was a sore misfit betwixt us in some way.  If it was the blam of the world, good ridance and parden, if it was my blam, let them which made me come to acount for’t.  I send herewith my great emruld ringg, with dimends which I suspect hath been the means of sending an inosent man into slavery.  I had a mind some years agone to wed with Caterin Cavendish, and she bein a hard made to approche, having ever a stiff turn of the sholder toward me, though I knew not why, I was not willin to resk my sute by word of mouth, nor having never a gift in writin by letter.  And so, knowin that mades like well such things, I bethought me of my emruld ring, and on the night of the ball, I being upstair in to lay off my hatt and cloak, stole privily into Catherin’s chamber, she being a-dancin below, and I laid the ring on her dresing table, thinkin that she would see it when she entered, and know it for a love token.

“And then I went myself below, and Caterin, she would have none of me, and made up such a face of ice when I approached, that methought I had maybe wasted my emruld ring.  So after a little up the stare I stole, and the ring was not where I had put it.  Then thinkin that the ring had been stole, and I had neither that nor the made, I raised a great hue and cry, and demanded that a search be maid, and the ring was found on Master Wingfield, and he was therefor transported, and I had my ring again, and myself knew not the true fact of the case until a year agone.  Then feeling that I had not much longer to live, I writ this, thinking that Master Wingfield was in a rich country, and not in sufferin, and a few months more would make not much odds to him.  The facs of the case, cousin, I knew from Madam Cavendish’s old servant woman Charlotte who came to my sister when the Cavendishs left for Virginia, having a fear of the sea, and later when my sister died, to my wife, and died but a year agone, and in her deathbed told me what she knew.  She told me truly, that she did see Madam Cavendish on the night of the ball go into Caterin’s chamber, and espying my emruld ring on her dressing-table, take it up and look at it with exceeding astonishment, and then lay it down not on the spot whereon I had left it, but on the prayer-book on the little stand beside her bed, and then go down stairs, frowning.  Then this same Charlotte, having litle interest in life as to her own affairs, and forced to suck others, if she would keep her wits nourished, being watchful, saw me enter, and miss the ring, and heard the hue and cry which I raised.  And then she, still watching, saw Master Harry Wingfield, who with others was searching the house for the lost treasure, stop as he was passing the open door of Caterin’s chamber, because