o time in returning
to Kentucky. The day following his arrival at Cane Ridge, he sent Major
Gilcrest a note asking for an interview. The messenger brought back the
note unopened and the verbal message from Gilcrest declining to hold
any intercourse with Abner or to receive any written communication from
him.

Rogers then advised communicating with the Major through a lawyer, but
Abner felt that he must see Betty before he could decide upon this
course. He contrived, through Aunt Dilsey, to convey a note to the
girl. She wrote back that she would meet him that afternoon at their
former trysting-place. Here, accordingly, the two lovers met, after a
separation of over half a year, and renewed their vows of love and
fealty.

Abner gave Betsy a full account of everything, and consulted with her
as to the best way to communicate with her father; for it was
imperative that Major Gilcrest should immediately be made acquainted
with Abner's true history and his right to the Hite inheritance. Betsy
urged her lover not to place his affairs in the hands of a lawyer until
she had first tried what she could do with her father. She also thought
that her mother, first of all, should be told everything. To this Abner
agreed.

That night Betsy had a long talk with her mother. Poor Mrs. Gilcrest,
who for many years had been oppressed by the dark secret of her early
life, felt now, when she had learned all that her daughter had to
reveal, as if a great burden was lifted from her spirit. She rejoiced
not only in the certainty that her own clandestine marriage was valid,
and that her cousin had been a lawfully wedded wife, but also because
of the knowledge that Abner Logan, whom she had always greatly liked,
was the son of her well-beloved cousin and foster sister, Mary Hollis,
and that he was in every respect a suitable mate for Betsy.

In her relief and joy she felt that she now had courage to confess all
to her husband. The next evening she nerved herself for this ordeal.

Mrs. Gilcrest could not have chosen a less favorable occasion for her
purpose; for Major Gilcrest had just learned, through one of the
servants, that Betsy had met her lover the afternoon before. He was
furiously exasperated that his daughter had thus set at naught his
commands; and he raved in so frenzied a style of disobedience,
deception, and of the infamy of any girl who would hold clandestine
meetings with a man, that poor, cowardly Mrs. Gilcrest's newly acqui