There are hints in Miss Leslie’s letter to Everell Fletcher that require some amplification to be quite intelligible. She looked upon herself as the unhappy, though innocent cause, of the old Indian woman’s misfortune; and, rash as generous, she had resolved, if possible, to extricate her. With the inconsiderate warmth of youthful feeling, she had, before the grave and reverend magistrates, declared her belief in Nelema’s innocence, and thereby implied a censure of their wisdom. This was certainly an almost unparalleled presumption in those times, when youth was accounted inferiority; but the very circumstance that in one light aggravated her fault, in another mitigated it; and her youth being admitted in extenuation of her offence, she was allowed to escape with a reproof and admonition of moderate length, while her poor guardian was condemned to a long and private conference on the urgency of reclaiming the spoiled child. Various modes of effecting so desirable an object were suggested; for, as the Scotchman said in an analogous case, “Ilka man can manage a wife but him that has her.” {174} This matter had passed over, and justice was proceeding in her stern course, when fortune, accident, or, more truly, Providence, favoured the benevolent wishes of our heroine. She had, as has been seen, been carried by an unforeseen circumstance to the house of one of the magistrates. There, mindful of the poor old prisoner, whose sentence she knew was daily expected from Boston, she had been watchful of every circumstance relating to her, and when she observed the key of her prison deposited in an accessible place (no one dreaming of any interference in behalf of the condemned), she was inspired with a sudden resolution to set her free. This was a bold, dangerous, and unlawful interposition; but Hope Leslie took counsel only from her own heart, and that told her that the rights of innocence were paramount to all other rights: and as to danger to herself, she did not weigh it--she did not think of it.