I was beginning to be truly happy.  I supposed that the final separation, mutually agreed upon between my wife and myself, was as effectual as all the courts in the country could make it, and I looked upon myself as a free man.  Accordingly, after I had been in Worthington some months I began to pay attentions to the daughter of a flourishing farmer.  She was a fine girl; she received my addresses favorably, and we were finally privately married.  This was the beginning of my life-long troubles.  In a few weeks her father found out that I had been previously married, and was not, so far as he knew, either a divorced man or a widower.  And so it happened, that one day when I was at his house, and with his daughter, he suddenly came home with a posse of people and a warrant for my arrest.  I was taken before a justice, and while we were waiting for proceedings to begin, or, possibly for the justice to arrive, I took the excited father aside and said: 

“You know I have a fine horse and buggy at the door.  Get in with me, and ride down home.  I will see your daughter and make everything right with her, and if you will let me run away, I’ll give her her the horse and buggy.”

The offer was too tempting to be refused.  The father had the warrant in his pocket, and he accepted my proposal.  We rode to his house, and he went into the back-room by direction of his daughter while she and I talked in the hall.  I explained matters as well as I could; I promised to see her again, and that very soon.  My horse and buggy were at the door.  Hastily bidding my new and young wife “good-bye,” I sprang into the buggy and drove rapidly away.  The father rushed to the door and raised a great hue and cry, and what was more, raised the neighbors; I had not driven five miles before all Worthington was after me.  But I had the start, the best horse, and I led in the race.  I drove to Hancock, N.Y., where my pursuers lost the trail; thence to Bennington, Vt., next to Brattleboro, Vt., and from there to Templeton, Mass.  What befel me at Templeton, shall be related in the next chapter.

CHAPTER II.

Miseries from my second marriage.

Love-making in Massachusetts-arrest for bigamy-trial at Northampton-A stunning sentence-sent to state prison-learning the brush business-sharpening picks-prison fare-in the hospital-kind treatment-successful horse shoeing-the warden my friend-efforts for my release-A full pardon.