elief when
she discovered traces of what struck her as insanity--or a morbid
desperation, bordering on that dire calamity--in the earlier letters of
that ill-fated woman. The answers of Hovey were coarse and illiterate,
though they manifested a sufficient desire to obtain the hand of a woman
of singular personal attractions, and whose great error he was willing
to overlook for the advantage of possessing one every way so much his
superior, and who it also appeared was not altogether destitute of
money. The remainder of this part of the correspondence was brief, and
it was soon confined to a few communications on business, in which
the miserable wife hastened the absent husband in his preparations to
abandon a world which there was a sufficient reason to think was as
dangerous to one of the parties as it was disagreeable to the other. But
a sincere expression had escaped her mother, by which Judith could get a
clue to the motives that had induced her to marry Hovey, or Hutter, and
this she found was that feeling of resentment which so often tempts the
injured to inflict wrongs on themselves by way of heaping coals on the
heads of those through whom they have suffered. Judith had enough of the
spirit of that mother to comprehend this sentiment, and for a moment did
she see the exceeding folly which permitted such revengeful feelings to
get the ascendancy.

There what may be called the historical part of the papers ceased. Among
the loose fragments, however, was an old newspaper that contained
a proclamation offering a reward for the apprehension of certain
free-booters by name, among which was that of Thomas Hovey. The
attention of the girl was drawn to the proclamation and to this
particular name by the circumstance that black lines had been drawn
under both, in ink. Nothing else was found among the papers that could
lead to a discovery of either the name or the place of residence of the
wife of Hutter. All the dates, signatures, and addresses had been
cut from the letters, and wherever a word occurred in the body of the
communications that might furnish a clue, it was scrupulously erased.
Thus Judith found all her hopes of ascertaining who her parents were
defeated, and she was obliged to fall back on her own resources and
habits for everything connected with the future. Her recollection of her
mother's manners, conversation, and sufferings filled up many a gap
in the historical facts she had now discovered, and the tru