rum (which is the usual dram of
that country), for he was just fainting away. When he was a little
recovered, I said to him, 'This story, you may be sure, requires a long
explanation, and therefore, have patience and compose your mind to hear
it out, and I'll make it as short as I can'; and with this, I told him
what I thought was needful of the fact, and particularly how my mother
came to discover it to me, as above. 'And now, my dear,' says I, 'you
will see reason for my capitulations, and that I neither have been the
cause of this matter, nor could be so, and that I could know nothing of
it before now.'

'I am fully satisfied of that,' says he, 'but 'tis a dreadful surprise
to me; however, I know a remedy for it all, and a remedy that shall put
an end to your difficulties, without your going to England.' 'That
would be strange,' said I, 'as all the rest.' 'No, no,' says he, 'I'll
make it easy; there's nobody in the way of it but myself.' He looked a
little disordered when he said this, but I did not apprehend anything
from it at that time, believing, as it used to be said, that they who
do those things never talk of them, or that they who talk of such
things never do them.

But things were not come to their height with him, and I observed he
became pensive and melancholy; and in a word, as I thought, a little
distempered in his head. I endeavoured to talk him into temper, and to
reason him into a kind of scheme for our government in the affair, and
sometimes he would be well, and talk with some courage about it; but
the weight of it lay too heavy upon his thoughts, and, in short, it
went so far that he made attempts upon himself, and in one of them had
actually strangled himself and had not his mother come into the room in
the very moment, he had died; but with the help of a Negro servant she
cut him down and recovered him.

Things were now come to a lamentable height in the family. My pity for
him now began to revive that affection which at first I really had for
him, and I endeavoured sincerely, by all the kind carriage I could, to
make up the breach; but, in short, it had gotten too great a head, it
preyed upon his spirits, and it threw him into a long, lingering
consumption, though it happened not to be mortal. In this distress I
did not know what to do, as his life was apparently declining, and I
might perhaps have married again there, very much to my advantage; it
had been certainly my business to hav