"I do not know whether what I must now tell you will be a surprise and a shock to you or not. Of course, I could see that you were not speaking out quite frankly about your husband and the loss of his good place; not that I am blaming you, for he is your husband, and you are bound to stick to him. You wrote me word that he was on his way to me, and I laid out my plans for giving him and you a start here if I could. But he did not turn up, and only ten days ago I got a letter from a lawyer in New Durham—a rising new town a good way from us—enclosing a letter from Rayburn. "Not to make too long a story of it, your husband told me that he had been on his way to me, five months ago, when at New Durham, he fell in with an old friend, and went into some kind of business with him, putting all the money he possessed into it. They seemed prosperous for a time, and Rayburn declares that he did not know that the articles they were selling were regular cheap locks and stoves and such things, with good English names on them, which this fellow Turner had got made out here, and not even of good materials. Of course, this could only go on for a time—people here are no fools—and Turner must have found out that he was suspected, for he made off with all he could get hold of, and left Rayburn to bear the consequences. Rayburn had a narrow escape of being roughly handled by a lot of fellows who had come to the town together to have it out with Turner. In these half-settled places people have a very short kind of justice, but he got away out of the shop with a whole skin, and was taken up for the cheating. Then he told the lawyer that he was my brother-in-law, and that I could speak for him, and so they sent for me. I went, of course, and found him very ill, I really think from fretting, for there is no doubt that he was badly treated by Turner. "They have not caught Turner, and now they will hardly do so; and I think Rayburn will get off for want of evidence against him. I would get him out on bail, but that he is so ill, that it is better for him to keep quiet. When he is free, I shall take him home with me, and Aimée will nurse him till he is all right again. And, if I find it possible, I may still do what I was thinking of—start an hotel in Gattigo to be supplied from my farm, and you and Rayburn to manage it. If he had come direct to me, all would be easy. Now I fear it may be a feeling against him, and in that case it would be risking money in setting up the hotel, and it is a great pity, for he is the very man for the place; he has such a pleasant manner. But there is no use in crying over spilt milk. I wish he was not your husband, for, truth to say, I do not like this business, though I cannot help liking him. And I will do what I can for your husband.