erners is still improving, though not yet well or strong enough
to accommodate herself to the motion of the ship sufficiently to enable
her to write to you. Nor will she send any confidential message through
me. She will not even see or speak to me. She keeps her state-room,
attended by my wife.

"She still resents her rescue, which she calls her abduction, and she
feels grief and indignation at being taken away from you, rather than
joy or gratitude at being saved from death. But then it is true that she
thinks she was only rescued from drowning in the flood. She does not
know that she was saved from a still more horrible fate.

"The mild insanity which appeared several months ago, and disappeared at
the birth of her child, and which then shielded her from all realization
of the horrors of her late position, still saves her from all knowledge
of what it was. Although now perfectly sane, she is entirely ignorant
that she was ever put on trial for her life, or condemned to death, or
sent to prison.

"Nor would I enlighten her on that subject lest the fate of the
sleep-walker should be hers--who, having safely walked over the parapet
of a bridge above an awful chasm, fell dead with horror the next morning
at beholding the peril he had escaped. I would advise you to maintain
the same inviolable secrecy on that subject. She does not know the
dangers she has passed, and she need never know them.

"They have spoken the ship, and I will go up and see what she is.

"_Later._--She is not the "Surprise," as she ought to have been. She is
the "Sally Ann," of Baltimore, homeward bound, with a cargo of silks.
She will lay alongside for half an hour to exchange letters and some
provisions.

"A few words more. Don't forget where I told you, you might find your
child, and then go and accuse me of stealing it.

"Remember that you have my authority for releasing the old woman from
her oath, that she may give you every detail of the rescue. But I
counsel you, that as soon as you shall have heard all that she has got
to tell you, you will seal up her lips with another oath even more
binding than the first.

"The continued existence of Sybil Berners should be kept a profound
secret from all others, except those few devoted friends who will follow
her into exile; and it should be kept so, for this reason; that
sometime, sooner or late, there will be an extradition treaty between
all civilized nations, for the delivering up of fugiti