“Even then I suspected no evil, but long afterward an investigation proved that this man had cruelly taken my mother’s life. Again I went to sea, and I left this man and his son at my house, as I believed, but the son, as a common seaman, shipped on my vessel, and as I was pacing the deck one night in a hard blow, I was thrown overboard by a sailor who approached me unawares. “The vessel went on, for none had seen the act, and I would have been lost had not a schooner picked me up not twenty minutes after I was hurled into the sea. Returning home again, I found the father and son there. Their fright at my appearance I took for surprise and joy, for all believed me lost, and the man who had thrown me into the sea had left the vessel at the first port and returned to report his success. “Dwelling in the same town where was my home was a physician and his daughter, an only child. That girl I loved with my whole heart, and before I again went to sea she became my wife. “With perfect trust, I left her at home with my supposed stepfather and his son, while her father, the doctor, accompanied me to sea as my guest, for his health was in a precarious condition, and he believed a sea voyage would benefit him. “When in Spain, a year after my marriage, word came from my wife of the birth of a little daughter. Then my father-in-law, who was still with me, urged that I should resign and return home. I followed his advice, and together we were to sail for London. The night before we sailed from Spain, when my father-in-law and I were returning to the hotel late in the evening, an assassin sprang from a dark corner and struck him to the heart with a knife. “Strange to say, I was arrested as his murderer, and sent to America for trial, for he was a man of vast wealth, and my wife was his only heir. For nearly two years I lay in prison, and then was acquitted, for no proof could be found against me. “And yet, in all that time my wife did not come near me, nor did my stepfather or his son. At last I left my cell, and returned to my home, to find I had no home, no wife, no child. This man, Carter Bainbridge, had sold all my property that he could lay hands on, and my wife had gone off with the son, whose name was Ben Talbot. “My child, I was told, was dead; and I believed it, especially when I received a letter from my misguided wife, bidding me farewell, and telling me that she intended to die by her own hand. Considerable property, left me by an aunt, I still had, and, with money at my disposal, I started to hunt down Carter Bainbridge and Ben Talbot. “It was long and tedious work, but I tracked this old man, step by step, for a long time, and discovered much of his evil life--aye, I discovered that he had deceived another woman, who believed she became his wife, and was then cast off by him, after he had robbed her of her wealth, and left her and her boy to starve. “That woman was the mother of the man known as Kansas King.”