st duty must be to write to Major Gilcrest and Betty," was his
first waking thought next morning. "My precious, loving Betty, I must
give you up; for even should you, after knowing my history, be willing
to marry me, I love you too well to allow one so sweet and pure, so
high in worldly position, to link her fate with a base-born earthworm
such as I am. O Father in heaven, give me strength to do the right!
Uncle Richard must take the necessary steps toward establishing Mrs.
Gilcrest in possession of the Hite estates," he concluded after more
reflection. "Not that she has any claim under the will, but because she
(barring myself) is Andrew Hite's next of kin. However, all this is
Uncle Richard's affair, not mine; but I hope the business can be
accomplished without revealing to any one that dark page in Jane
Gilcrest's early life. Betsy, at any cost, must be spared the
knowledge."

Abner wrote to Major Gilcrest, renouncing all claim to Betsy, and
enclosing a note for her, which he requested her father to give to her.

After this duty was performed, the young man fell into a state of dull
despair which benumbed every faculty. Holmes has said, "A great
calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It
stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book
of life, before its blot of tears and of blood is dry upon the page we
are turning." For weeks after Abner had learned the secret of his
birth, it seemed to him that this blighting, blackening misery which
had laid low his pride, and killed every hope, permeated, not only all
his past, but all his future. He seemed to have been born for nothing
else but to experience this agony of loss and shame. He could make no
plans. The future stretched out before him a desert waste; for, with
the downfall of family pride and the loss of Betty, his ambition
likewise had perished.

He was finally aroused by a communication from James Anson Drane. This
communication stated that, owing to certain facts which had recently
come into the writer's possession, he must decline to act any longer as
"Mr. Logan's" agent. These facts, as Mr. Drane wrote, were as follows:
The Mary Belle Hollis Page named in the will of the late Colonel Andrew
Hite, of Crestlands, Sterling County, Virginia, had died and been
buried at the village of Centerton, Virginia, March 9, 1782, nearly two
months prior to the execution of the will; she had left no legitimate
issue; and, t