prepared it at the
proper time for the grave. It was laid in the coffin in my presence,
and I afterwards saw the coffin screwed down previous to its removal.
When that had been done, and not before, I received what was due to me
and left the house. I refer persons who may wish to investigate my
character to Mr. Goodricke. He will bear witness that I can be trusted
to tell the truth.

(Signed) JANE GOULD

4. THE NARRATIVE OF THE TOMBSTONE

Sacred to the Memory of Laura, Lady Glyde, wife of Sir Percival Glyde,
Bart., of Blackwater Park, Hampshire, and daughter of the late Philip
Fairlie, Esq., of Limmeridge House, in this parish. Born March 27th,
1829; married December 22nd, 1849; died July 25th, 1850.

5. THE NARRATIVE OF WALTER HARTRIGHT

Early in the summer of 1850 I and my surviving companions left the
wilds and forests of Central America for home. Arrived at the coast,
we took ship there for England. The vessel was wrecked in the Gulf of
Mexico--I was among the few saved from the sea. It was my third escape
from peril of death. Death by disease, death by the Indians, death by
drowning--all three had approached me; all three had passed me by.

The survivors of the wreck were rescued by an American vessel bound for
Liverpool. The ship reached her port on the thirteenth day of October
1850. We landed late in the afternoon, and I arrived in London the
same night.

These pages are not the record of my wanderings and my dangers away
from home. The motives which led me from my country and my friends to
a new world of adventure and peril are known. From that self-imposed
exile I came back, as I had hoped, prayed, believed I should come
back--a changed man. In the waters of a new life I had tempered my
nature afresh. In the stern school of extremity and danger my will had
learnt to be strong, my heart to be resolute, my mind to rely on
itself. I had gone out to fly from my own future. I came back to face
it, as a man should.

To face it with that inevitable suppression of myself which I knew it
would demand from me. I had parted with the worst bitterness of the
past, but not with my heart's remembrance of the sorrow and the
tenderness of that memorable time. I had not ceased to feel the one
irreparable disappointment of my life--I had only learnt to bear it.
Laura Fairlie was in all my thoughts when the ship bore me away, and I
looked my last at England. Laura Fai