he held toward me before my marriage, remained; and these, while they drew him to my side, made him cherish my honour and integrity as a wife, as he would cherish the apple of his eye.  And yet he has been murdered, and I have been cast off, while both were innocent!  Fatal haste!  Fatal misjudgment!  How suddenly have I fallen from the pinnacle of happiness into the dark pit of despair!  Alas! alas!  Who can tell what a day may bring forth?”

Another, and very important paper, which the casket contained, was a written declaration of Mrs. Miller’s innocence, made by Westfield before his death.  It was evidently one of his last acts, and was penned with a feeble and trembling hand.  It was in these impressive words:—­

“Solemnly, in the presence of God, and without the hope of living but a few hours, do I declare that Mrs. Anna Miller is innocent of the foul charges made against her by her husband and brother, and that I never, even in thought, did wrong to her honour.  I was on terms of close intimacy with her, and this her husband knew and freely assented to.  I confess that I had a higher regard for her than for any living woman.  She imbodied all my highest conceptions of female excellence.  I was never happier than when in her company.  Was this a crime?  It would have been had I attempted to win from her any thing beyond a sentiment of friendship.  But this I never did after her marriage, and do not believe that she regarded me in any other light than as her own and her husband’s friend.  This is all that, as a dying man, I can do or say.  May heaven right the innocent!  HENRY WESTFIELD.”

Besides the paper in the handwriting of Mrs. Miller, which I have given, there were many more, evidently written at various times, but all shortly after her separation from her husband.  They imbodied many touching allusions to her condition, united with firm expressions of her entire innocence of the imputation under which she lay.  One sentiment particularly arrested my attention, and answered the question that constantly arose in my mind, as to why she did not attempt, by means of Westfield’s dying asseveration, to establish her innocence.  It was this:—­

“He has prejudged me guilty and cast me off without seeing me or giving me a hearing, and then insulted me by a legislative tender of five hundred dollars a year.  Does he think that I would save myself, even from starvation, by means of his bounty?  No—­no—­he does not know the woman he has wronged.”

After going over the entire contents of the casket, I replaced them, and sent the whole to Mr. Miller, with a brief note, stating that they had come into my possession in rather a singular manner, and that I deemed it but right to transmit them to him.  Scarcely half an hour had elapsed from the time my messenger departed, before Miller himself entered my office, pale and agitated.  I had met him a few times before, and had a slight acquaintance with him.