e minister who had married them; and while
yet laboring under the agitation produced by this shock, was further
startled by seeing in a New York paper the name of Mr. Clavering among
the list of arrivals at the Hoffman House; showing that my letter to
him had failed in its intended effect, and that the patience Mary had
calculated upon so blindly was verging to its end. I was consequently
far from being surprised when, in a couple of weeks or so afterwards,
a letter came from him to my address, which, owing to the careless
omission of the private mark upon the envelope, I opened, and read
enough to learn that, driven to desperation by the constant failures
which he had experienced in all his endeavors to gain access to her in
public or private, _a._ failure which he was not backward in ascribing
to her indisposition to see him, he had made up his mind to risk
everything, even her displeasure; and, by making an appeal to her uncle,
end the suspense under which he was laboring, definitely and at once. "I
want you," he wrote; "dowered or dowerless, it makes little difference
to me. If you will not come of yourself, then I must follow the example
of the brave knights, my ancestors; storm the castle that holds you, and
carry you off by force of arms."

Neither can I say I was much surprised, knowing Mary as I did, when, in
a few days from this, she forwarded to me for copying, this reply:
"If Mr. Rob-bins ever expects to be happy with Amy Belden, let him
reconsider the determination of which he speaks. Not only would he by
such an action succeed in destroying the happiness of her he professes
to love, but run the greater risk of effectually annulling the affection
which makes the tie between them endurable."

To this there was neither date nor signature. It was the cry of warning
which a spirited, self-contained creature gives when brought to bay. It
made even me recoil, though I had known from the first that her pretty
wilfulness was but the tossing foam floating above the soundless depths
of cold resolve and most deliberate purpose.

What its real effect was upon him and her fate I can only conjecture.
All I know is that in two weeks thereafter Mr. Leavenworth was found
murdered in his room, and Hannah Chester, coming direct to my door from
the scene of violence, begged me to take her in and secrete her from
public inquiry, as I loved and desired to serve Mary Leavenworth.

XXXIII. UNEXPECTED TESTIMONY

_Pol