oor, and then return to the chaise and drive rapidly away.

The opinion was, by those who were cognizant of the fact, that this was
a secret, preconcerted sign by which the lover should recognize the
place of her retreat; and being too faintly drawn, through the darkness
of the night he failed to discover the characters.

From this time, however, the spirits of the stranger evidently sunk; and
in two weeks more birth and death had followed each other, and the grave
had closed over all.

This stranger had, in her peculiar situation, tenderly won upon the
sympathies of a few kind-hearted individuals who had made their way to
her, one of whom, a Mrs. Southwick, lived directly opposite the Bell
Tavern. These were with her in her last great agony, in which all sense
of guilt was lost in pity. Mrs. S. has related that no word of complaint
or accusation was heard to fall from her lips, while the spirit seemed
brightening with an unearthly hope, till what was charming in life was
indescribably lovely in death. Thus they laid the beautiful stranger in
the saintly robes of the sepulchre without censure and without
accusation, not knowing how painfully she was mourned and missed, as a
star shut out of vision by clouds and storm, in the home of her
childhood and in the heart of a widowed mother.

She had passed under the assumed name of Walker while at the Bell Tavern
of Danvers, and her wardrobe was found marked with the corresponding
initials, "E.W.," although applying to her real name as well. These
facts, in connection with her death, were immediately published in the
Boston and Salem journals, and her friends advertised to appear; and
thus were her real name and place of residence elicited.

A short time afterwards, and a stranger came and caused to be erected in
the old burying ground in Danvers, on the spot where she was interred,
two "gray stones," after the manner of Ossian, with the touching
inscription which this volume records; and the feet of strangers, moved
by pity and humanity, have worn a path to her grave which he who covets
most in the world's memory might even envy.

The tombstones (which the fathers of that ancient town should shame to
have recorded) have been battered and broken for relics, till much of
the inscription is gone already, and the footstone entirely removed.

But I have noted that Elizabeth Whitman was of superior merit, and had
been recognized as a child of genius in its most earnest sense.