'--We need not interrupt the story to tell
how much surprised he affected to be with this strange procedure of
his brothers-in-law, and with this declaration of his wife. But all
his professions of fondness for her, to the contrary notwithstanding,
they rode off with her before his eyes.--He followed and overtook, and
went with them to her father's; but she was locked up from him, with
her own consent, and he returned home.

"Now he saw that his character was gone, his respectable friends
believed that he had massacred George; but, worst of all, he saw that
they considered the life of the harmless Letitia was in danger from
his perfidious hands. It was too much for his chivalry to sustain. The
proud Virginian sunk under the accumulated load of public odium. He
proposed to his brother Isham, who had been his accomplice in the
George affair, that they should finish the play of life with a still
deeper tragedy. The plan was, that they should shoot one another.
Having made the hot-brained bargain, they repaired with their guns to
the grave-yard, which was on an eminence in the midst of his
plantation. It was inclosed with a railing, say thirty feet square.
One was to stand at one railing, and the other over against him at the
other. They were to make ready, take aim, and count deliberately 1, 2,
3, and then fire. Lilburn's will was written, and thrown down open
beside him. They cocked their guns and raised them to their faces; but
the peradventure occurring that one of the guns might miss fire, Isham
was sent for a rod, and when it was brought, Lilburn cut it off at
about the length of two feet, and was showing his brother how the
survivor might do, provided one of the guns should fail; (for they
were determined upon going together;) but forgetting, perhaps, in the
perturbation of the moment that the gun was cocked, when he touched
trigger with the rod the gun fired, and he fell, and died in a few
minutes--and was with George in the eternal world, where _the slave is
free from his master_. But poor Isham was so terrified with this
unexpected occurrence and so confounded by the awful contortions of
his brother's face, that he had not nerve enough to follow up the
play, and finish the plan as was intended, but suffered Lilburn to go
alone. The negroes came running to see what it meant that a gun should
be fired in the grave-yard. There lay their master, dead! They ran for
the neighbors. Isham still remained on the spot. The n