“Years ago, in the days when the earth was new and sweet to me--in the mountain-moving period of life, the tragedy began. I loved, and like the lover of Annabel Lee I may say that the angels of heaven coveted the love of her and me. I was one of the editors of the most prosperous daily newspaper in the city that was my home, my uncle being its proprietor. He had no children of his own, and had brought up my brother and me, our parents having died, when we were very little. “A sensational criminal trial was before the courts of a distant city, and it was arranged that I was to attend it and send daily letters to my journal. As it promised to last several weeks, the separation from Emma looked unendurable. I must marry her and take her with me. But when I told my plan to her she said she couldn’t leave her father, who was old, feeble and almost blind, with nobody else to care for him. In my selfishness I had forgotten him. ‘I cannot go with you,’ she said, ‘but I am willing to marry you before you go. It will comfort me while you are gone just to know that I am your wife.’ “So we married, telling no one but Emma’s father. The secrecy was needless and foolish, but when young we are all more or less enslaved by the ways of others, and this was too violent a departure from custom to be proclaimed just then. “Ours was an unusual but not unhappy honey-moon. We wrote every day, long, glowing letters, and annihilated distance with our thought. “But one day a telegram came announcing that my wife had been murdered--struck down in her own home, in the light of day, in the presence of her helpless old father. “Behind the dreadful deed was the usual crazy rejected suitor. I knew the wretched boy well--he was but a boy--but never dreamed of the ghastly possibilities within his crooked mind. But what know we of any one? Who is safe from treating the community to a hideous sensation? “He had long been fond of Emma, but lost hope when he saw that my attitude toward her was an assured one. But after I went away he got it into his crazy head that we had quarreled, and took heart again. When he implored her to marry him, and she refused without telling him that she was already married, he shot her dead and then shot himself. “Horror, grief, and remorse overwhelmed me. I blamed myself. Why had I not announced the marriage at once? Had the wretched boy known that Emma was my wife, he would have let her alone, I am sure. What did it avail that I put a tablet at her grave bearing the name of Emma Westfield? Humble as was the name it might have protected her had it been openly bestowed upon her.