"I didn’t tell Johnston but resolved when an opportunity came to stand up with him before an ordained minister. It came sooner than I hoped. Not six weeks after we were man and wife a ’missioner’ made a tour through the mining camps of that part of the state. He would not come to ours—we were too small and distant—so I begged my husband to go to him, tell him our case and bring him back. It would have been better for us both to have gone, but I was sick—too young and ignorant to know the cause of my illness—and Johnston, who seemed willing to do anything I wanted, agreed. "We calculated that the trip—on horseback, over half-cut mountain trails—would take three or four days there and back. At the end of the fifth day he had not returned and I was in a fever of anxiety. Then again that woman came to me with her poisoned words: I was not a legal wife; could he, knowing this, have taken the opportunity to desert me? God pity her for the deadly harm she did. Sick, alone, inexperienced, eaten into by horrible doubts, I waited till two weeks had passed. Then I was sure that he had done as she said—left me. "I won’t go over that—the past is past. I took what money I had and made my way to the railway. From there by slow stages, for by this time I was ill in mind and body, I got as far as St. Louis, where, my money gone, unable to work, I wrote to an uncle of my mother’s, a doctor, whom I had never seen but of whom she had often spoken to me. "Men like him make us realize there is a God to inspire, a Heaven to reward. He came at once, took me to his home in Indiana, and nursed me back to health. He was a father to me, more than a father to the child I had. No one knew me there—no one but he ever heard my story. I took a new name, from a distant branch of his family, and passed as a widow. When my little girl was old enough to understand I told her her father had died before she was born. "We lived there for twenty-four years. Before the end of that time the name of Johnston Barker rose into prominence. My uncle hated it—would not allow it mentioned in his presence. When he died three years ago, he left us all he had—fifty thousand dollars, a great fortune to us. Then Carol, who had chafed at the narrow life of a small town, persuaded me to come to New York. I had no fear of meeting Barker, our paths would never cross, and to please her was my life. "She is not like me, fearful and timid, but full of daring and ambition. When the farm we bought in New Jersey suddenly increased in value and the land scheme was suggested, she wanted to try it. At first it wasn’t possible as we hadn’t enough money. It was not until she met Mr. Harland at a friend’s house in Azalea, that the plan became feasible for he was taken with the idea at once. After visiting the farm a few times, and talking it over with her, he offered to come in as a silent partner, putting up the capital.