n the case of any one else, I should have openly acknowledged that my
own convictions remained unshaken. If no quarrel had taken place at the
limekiln, I should have been quite ready, as I viewed the case, to
believe that John Jago's disappearance was referable to the terrible
disappointment which Naomi had inflicted on him. The same morbid dread
of ridicule which had led him to assert that he cared nothing for
Naomi, when he and Silas had quarreled under my bedroom window, might
also have impelled him to withdraw himself secretly and suddenly from
the scene of his discomfiture. But to ask me to believe, after what had
happened at the limekiln, that he was still living, was to ask me to
take Ambrose Meadowcroft's statement for granted as a true statement of
facts.

I had refused to do this from the first; and I still persisted in
taking that course. If I had been called upon to decide the balance of
probability between the narrative related by Ambrose in his defense and
the narrative related by Silas in his confession, I must have owned, no
matter how unwillingly, that the confession was, to my mind, the least
incredible story of the two.

Could I say this to Naomi? I would have written fifty advertisements
inquiring for John Jago rather than say it; and you would have done the
same, if you had been as fond of her as I was. I drew out the
advertisement, for insertion in the Morwick _Mercury_, in these terms:

MURDER.--Printers of newspapers throughout the United States are
desired to publish that Ambrose Meadowcroft and Silas Meadowcroft, of
Morwick Farm, Morwick County, are committed for trial on the charge of
murdering John Jago, now missing from the farm and from the
neighborhood. Any person who can give information of the existence of
said Jago may save the lives of two wrongly-accused men by making
immediate communication. Jago is about five feet four inches high. He
is spare and wiry; his complexion is extremely pale, his eyes are dark,
and very bright and restless. The lower part of his face is concealed
by a thick black beard and mustache. The whole appearance of the man is
wild and flighty.

I added the date and the address. That evening a servant was sent on
horseback to Narrabee to procure the insertion of the advertisement in
the next issue of the newspaper.

When we parted that night, Naomi looked almost like her brighter and
happier self. Now that the advertisement was on its way to the
printing-