ad granted a pardon. Henry served only six months of
the eighteen for which he was sentenced, and very soon after I received
word that he was free, he came to me in Boston, stayed a few days, and
then went home to his mother in Unadilla.

With the release of my son, I considered the Scheimer account closed,
and I have never made any effort to see Sarah or our boy since that
time.

From Boston I went to Pittsford, Ontario County, N. Y., where I had many
friends, who knew nothing about any of my marriages or misfortunes, my
arrests or imprisonments. I went visiting merely, and enjoyed myself so
much that I stayed there nearly three months, going about the country,
and practicing a little among my friends. I was never happier than I was
during this time. I was free from prisons, free from my wives, and
free from care. As a matrimonial monomaniac I now looked upon myself as
cured.

Among the friends whom I visited in Ontario County, and with whom I
passed several pleasant weeks, were two cousins of mine whom I had not
seen for many years, since we were children in fact, but who gave me a
most cordial welcome, and made much of me while I was there. They knew
absolutely nothing of my unhappy history--no unpleasant rumor even
respecting me, had ever penetrated that quiet quarter of the State. I
told them what I pleased of my past career, from boyhood to the present
time, and to them I was only a tolerably successful doctor, who made
money enough to live decently and dress well, and who was then suffering
from overwork and badly in need of recuperation. This, indeed, was the
ostensible reason for my visit to Ontario. I was somewhat shattered; my
old prison trials and troubles began to tell upon me. I used to think
sometimes that I was a little "out of my head;" I certainly was so
whenever I entered upon one of my matrimonial schemes, and I must have
been as mad as a March hare when I attempted to kidnap Sarah Scheimer's
boy. After all the excitement and suffering of the past few years, I
needed rest, and here I found it.

My cousins were more than well-to-do farmers; they were enormously
rich in lands and money. Just after the war of 1812, their father,
my uncle, and my own father, had come to this, then wild and almost
uninhabited, section of the State to settle. Soon after they arrived
there my father's wife died, and this loss, with the general loneliness
of the region, to say nothing of the fever and ague, soon drove my