erformed in the garden. For
after much consultation and several conferences with the authorities, we
have decided to preserve from public knowledge, not only the secret of
the room hidden in my house, but of the discovery which has lately been
made there. But while much harm would accrue to me by revelations which
would throw a pall of horror over my inn, and make it no better than a
place of morbid curiosity forever, the purposes of justice would be
rather hindered than helped by a publicity which would give warning to
the guilty couple, and prevent us from surprising them in the imagined
security which the lapse of so many years must have brought them.

And so a grave is being dug in the garden, where, at the darkest hour of
night, the remains of the sweet and gentle bride are to be placed
without tablet or mound.

Meanwhile do there hide in any part of this wicked world two hearts
which throb with unusual terrors this night? Or does there pass across
the mirror of a guilty memory any unusual shapes of horror prognostic of
detection and coming punishment? It would comfort my uneasy heart to
know; for the spirit of vengeance has seized upon me, and my house will
never seem washed of its stain, or my conscience be quite at rest as to
the past, till that vile man and woman pay, in some way, the penalty of
their crime.

That we know nothing of them but their names lends an interest to their
pursuit. The very difficulty before us, the hopelessness almost of the
task we have set ourselves, have raised in me a wild and well-nigh
superstitious reliance on Providence and the eternal justice, so that it
seems natural for me to expect aid even from such sources as dreams and
visions, and make the inquiry in which I have just indulged the
reasonable expression of my belief in the mysterious forces of right and
wrong, which will yet bring this long triumphant, but now secretly
threatened, pair to justice.

Dr. Kenyon, who is as practical as he is pious, smiles at my confidence;
but Mr. Tamworth neither mocks nor frowns. He has shouldered the
responsibility of finding this man, and has often observed, in his long
life, that a woman's intuitions go as far as a man's reasoning.

To-morrow he will start upon his travels.

JUNE 12, 1791.

It is foolish to put every passing thought on paper, but these sheets
have already served me so well that I cannot resist the temptation of
making them the repositories of my secret