A month afterward her brother was in Worcester, and stopped at this
house. The landlord, after some conversation about general matters,
said:

"So your sister is married to the Doctor?"

"I know nothing about it," was the reply.

This led to a full and altogether too free disclosure to the astonished
brother about the particulars of our visit to the same house a month
before, and his sister's representations that we were married. The
brother immediately started for home, and repeated the story, as it was
told to him, to his father and the family. Without seeing his daughter,
the father at once procured a warrant, and had me arrested and brought
before a justice on charge of seduction. The trial was brief; the
daughter herself swore positively, that though she had been imprudent
and indiscreet in going to Worcester with me, no improper communication
had ever, there or elsewhere, taken place between us.

Of course, there was nothing to do but to let me go and I was
discharged. But out of this affair came the worst that had yet fallen
to my lot in life. The story got into the papers, with particulars and
names of the parties, and in this way the people at Worthington, who had
chased me as far as Hancock and had there lost all trace of me, found
out where I was. If I had been aware of it, they might have looked
elsewhere for me; but while I was felicitating myself upon my escape
from the latest difficulty, down came an officer from Worthington with a
warrant for my arrest. This officer, the sheriff, was connected with the
family into which I had married in Worthington, and with him came two or
three more relatives, all bound, as they boasted, to "put me through."
They were excessively irate against me and very much angered, especially
that their race after me to Hancock had been fruitless. I had fallen
into the worst possible hands.

They took me to Northampton and brought me before a Justice, on a
charge of bigamy: The sheriff who arrested me, and the relatives who
accompanied him were willing to swear my life away, if they could, and
the justice was ready enough to bind me over to take my trial in court,
which was not to be in session for full six months to come. Those long,
weary six months I passed in the county jail. Then came my trial. I had
good counsel. There was not a particle of proof that I was guilty of
bigamy; no attempt was made on the part of the prosecution to produce
my first wife, from whom I had sep