We must not omit to mention, that a few weeks after Charlie's death young Van Horne offered himself to Mary Hubbard, the youngest daughter of the family; he was accepted, and the connexion, which was very gratifying to Patsey and her mother, proved a happy one. Mrs. Hubbard survived her daughter's marriage several years. Kate and her little ones have remained at the old grey cottage from the time of Clapp's flight; the children are now growing up promising young people, and they owe much to Patsey's judicious care. Willie, the hero of the temperance meeting, is her favourite, for she persuades herself that he is like her lost Charlie; and in many respects the boy happily resembles his uncle far more than his father. Last year Mrs. Clapp received for the first time, a letter in a handwriting very like that of her husband; its contents seemed distressing, for she wept much, and held several consultations with Patsey. At length quite a little sum was drawn from their modest means, Kate packed up her trunk, took leave of her sister and children, and set out upon a long and a solitary journey. She was absent for months; but letters were occasionally received from her, and at length she returned to the grey cottage in deep mourning. It was supposed that she was now a widow; and as Patsey upon one single occasion confirmed the report, the opinion must have been correct, for Patsey Hubbard's word was truth itself. No public account of Clapp's death, however, reached Longbridge, and his name was never mentioned by the Hubbards; still, it seemed to be known at last that Mrs. Clapp had gone to a great distance, to attend her husband during a long and fatal illness: and Mrs. Tibbs also found out by indefatigable inquiries, far and near, that about the same time one of the elders of Joe Smith, the Mormon impostor, had died of consumption at Nauvoo; that he had written somewhere several months before his death, that a delicate-looking woman had arrived, and had not quitted his side as long as he lived; that immediately after his death she had left Nauvoo, and had gone no one knew whither. It is quite certain that a young man from Longbridge travelling at the west, wrote home that he had seen Mrs. Clapp on board a Mississippi steamer, just about that time. The story is probably true, although nothing very positive is known at Longbridge. {"no public account" = the uncertainty surrounding Mr. Clapp's fate resembles that of Judith Hutter, at the end of James Fenimore Cooper's "The Deerslayer" (1841)} As for Hopgood, we have already mentioned that he had been arrested, and most righteously condemned to a long imprisonment for his share in that unprincipled, audacious conspiracy. A year afterwards, however, it pleased those in authority to send him out into the community again; he was pardoned--