nter, earning a good living and laying by some money.
During the whole time I never heard a word from Sarah. I wrote at least
fifty letters to her, but as I learned afterward, and, indeed, surmised
at the time, every one of them was intercepted by her father or
brothers, and she did not know where I was and so could not write to me.
I left Dover in May and went down to New York. I had some business
there which was soon transacted, and early in June I went over to New
Jersey--to Oxford, a small place near Belvidere.

This place I meant to make my base of operations for the new campaign I
had been planning all winter. I "put up" at a public house kept by a man
who was known in the region round about as the "Boston Yankee," for he
migrated from Boston to New Jersey and was doing a thriving business
at hotel keeping in Oxford. What a thorough good-fellow he was will
presently appear. I had been in the hotel four days and had become
pretty intimate with the landlord before I ventured to make inquiries
about what I was most anxious to learn; but finally I asked him if he
knew the Scheimers over the river? He looked at me in a very comical
way, and then broke out:

"Well, I declare, I thought I knew you, you're the chap that tried to
run away with old Scheimer's daughter Sarah, last August; and you're
down here to get her this time, if you can."

I owned up to my identity, but warned Boston Yankee that if he told any
one who I was, or that I was about there, I'd blow his brains out.

"You keep cool," said he, "don't you be uneasy; I'm your friend and the
gal's friend, and I'll help you both all I can; and if you want to carry
off Sarah Scheimer and marry her, I'll tell you how to work it. You see
she has been watched as closely as possible all winter, ever since she
got well, for she was crazy-like, awhile. Well, you could'n't get nearer
to her, first off, than you could to the North Pole; but do you remember
Mary Smith who was servant gal, there when you boarded with Scheimer?" I
remembered the girl well and told him so, and he continued: "Well, I saw
her the other day, and she told me she was living in Easton, and where
she could be found; now, I'll give you full directions and do you take
my horse and buggy to-morrow morning early and go down and see her, and
get her to go over and let Sarah know that you're round; meantime I'll
keep dark; I know my business and you know yours."

I need not say how overjoyed I was to fi