st-cousin; and it was
understood that they were under a matrimonial engagement. But in
May 1772, some little disagreement having happened between them,
he, out of resentment, or from some other motive, paid great
attention to another girl; and on Sunday the 31st of that month, in
the afternoon, accompanied her to the Methodist meeting at Wall.
During their absence, the slighted female, who was very beautiful
in her person, but of an extremely irritable temper, took a rope
and a common prayer-book, in which she had folded down the 109th
Psalm, and, going into an adjacent field, hanged herself. Thomas,
on his return from the preaching, inquired for Betsy; and being
told she had not been seen for two or three hours, he exclaimed,
'Good God! she has destroyed herself!' which apprehension seems to
show, either that she had threatened to commit suicide in
consequence of his desertion, or that he dreaded it from a
knowledge of the violence of her disposition. But when he saw that
his fears were realised, and had read the psalm, so full of
execrations, which she had pointed out to him, he cried out, 'I am
ruined for ever and ever!' The very sight of this village and
neighbourhood was now become insupportable, and he went to live at
Marazion, hoping that a change of scene and social intercourse
might expel those excruciating reflections which harrowed up his
very soul, or at least render them less acute; but in this he
appeared to be mistaken, for he found himself closely pursued by
the evil demon

'Despair, whose torments no man, sure,
But lovers and the damned endure.'

"To hear the 109th Psalm would petrify him with horror, and
therefore he would not attend divine service on the 22d day of the
month; he dreaded to go near a reading school, lest he should hear
the dreaded lesson. Whatever misfortunes befel him (and these were
not a few, for he was several times hurt, and even maimed, in the
mines in which he laboured), he still attributed them all to the
malevolent agency of the deceased, and thought he could find
allusions to the whole in the calamitous legacy which she had
bequeathed him. When he slumbered, for he knew nothing of sound
sleep, the injured girl appeared to his imagination, with such a
countenance as she retained after th