some lines, which seemed to have been
added, on second thoughts, to what went before. I do not remember the
exact words; but the sense referred, shamelessly enough as I thought,
to the child that was afterwards born, and to her resolution, if it came
into the world alive, to suffer all things for its sake.

"It was at first some relief to know that she was gone. The dreadful
exposure and degradation that threatened us, seemed to be delayed at
least by her absence. On questioning Ellen Gough, I found that the other
two young women who worked under me, and who were most providentially
absent on a Christmas visit to their friends, were not acquainted with
my niece's infamous secret. Ellen had accidentally discovered it; and
she had, therefore, been obliged to confess to Ellen, and put trust in
her. Everybody else in the house had been as successfully deceived as I
had been myself. When I heard this, I began to have some hope that our
family disgrace might remain unknown in the town.

"I wrote to my brother, not telling him what had happened, but only
begging him to come back instantly. It was the bitterest part of all
the bitter misery I then suffered, to think of what I had now to tell
Joshua, and of what dreadful extremities his daughter's ruin might drive
him to. I strove hard to prepare myself for the time of coming trial;
but what really took place was worse than my worst forebodings.

"When my brother heard the shocking news I had to tell, and saw the
scrawled paper she had left for him, he spoke and acted as if he was
out of his mind. It was only charitable, only fair to his previous
character, to believe, as I then believed, that distress had actually
driven him, for the time, out of his senses. He declared that he would
go away instantly and search for her, and set others seeking for her
too. He said, he even swore, that he would bring her back home the
moment he found her; that he would succor her in her misery, and accept
her penitence, and shelter her under his roof the same as ever, without
so much as giving a thought to the scandal and disgrace that her
infamous situation would inflict on her family. He even wrested
Scripture from its true meaning to support him in what he said, and in
what he was determined to do. And, worst of all, the moment he heard
how it was that I had discovered his daughter's crime, he insisted that
Ellen Gough should be turned out of the house: he declared, in such
awful language