Chapter 25, Competition in Cunning Summary and Analysis

Doctor Flint has now taken three trips to New York in search of Linda, so he clearly believes that she has escaped to the free states. Linda decides to reinforce this belief of his by sending him a letter postmarked from New York. She writes two letters, one to Dr. Flint and one to her grandmother, and gets her friend, Peter, to have the letters taken to New York and mailed from there.

The ruse is successful, and Dr. Flint is convinced that Linda has been living in Boston. He intercepts the letter Linda has sent to her grandmother, and replaces it with one he has written himself, in which Linda claims to be miserable in the North and wishes to return to the South. He hopes that this false letter will convince Linda's family...