e boys were
quite young, but the youngsters had managed to get a fair start in
life. Without ado let me say that I am Andrew Witherspoon. My brother
and I were of different temperaments. He had graces of mind, but was
essentially a business man. I prided myself that I was born to be a
thinker. I worshiped Emerson. I know now that a man who would
willingly become a thinker is a fool. When I was twenty-three--and
George nearly twenty-one--I fell in love with Caroline Springer. There
was just enough of poetry in my nature to throw me into a devotion
that was almost wild in its intensity, and after my first meeting with
her I knew no peace. The chill of fear and the fever of confidence
came alternating day by day, and months passed ere I had the strength
of nerve to declare myself; but at last the opportunity and the
courage came together. I was accepted. She said that if I had great
love her love might be measured by my own, and that if I did not think
that I could love her always she would go away and end her days in
grief. The wedding day was appointed. But when I went to claim my
bride she was gone--gone with my brother George. To-day, an old man, I
look back upon that time and see myself raving on the very brink of
madness. I had known that George was acquainted with Caroline
Springer--indeed, I had proudly introduced him to her. I will tell my
story, though, and not discourse. But it is hard for an old man to be
straightforward. If he has read much he is discursive, and if he has
not read he is tedious with many words. I didn't leave Salem at once.
I met George, and he did not even attempt to apologize for the wrong
he had done me. He repeated the fool saying that all is fair in love.
'You ought to be glad that you discovered her lack of love in time,'
he said. This was consolation, surely. My mind may never have been
well-balanced, and I think that at this time it tilted over to one
side, never to tilt back. And now my love, trampled in the mire, arose
in the form of an evil determination. I would do my brother and his
wife an injury that could not be repaired. I did not wish them dead; I
wanted them to live and be miserable. A year passed, and a boy was
born. I left my native town and went west. I lived there nearly three
years, and then I sent to a Kansas newspaper an account of my death.
It was printed, and I sent my brother a marked copy of the paper. Two
weeks later I was in Salem. I wore a beard, kept myself clo