He had awoke. The terrible dream was over. From that moment he was himself. What passed between him and Selma on that fatal evening, I never knew. He has not spoken her name since that night. CHAPTER XXVIII. Mrs. Dawsey lay at the mansion, under guard, for several weeks. When finally able to be moved she was conveyed to the 'furnished apartments' bespoken for her by Joe. Her husband, after a short confinement in jail, was set at liberty, and then made strenuous efforts to effect his wife's release on bail. He did not succeed. Public feeling ran very high against her; and that, probably more than the fact that she was charged with an unbailable crime, operated to prolong her residence at the public boarding house kept for runaway slaves and common felons at Trenton. At the next session of the 'county court,' after an imprisonment of four months, she was arraigned for trial. Owing to the death of Selma, Mulock was the only white witness against her. He told a straightforward story, the most rigid cross-examination not swerving him from it, and deposed to Dawsey's having attempted to bribe him to go away. His evidence was conclusive as to the prisoner's guilt; but her counsel, an able man, made so damaging an assault on his personal character, that the jury disagreed. Mrs. Dawsey was then remanded to jail to await a new trial, at the next sitting of the court. Shortly after the trial, Mulock suddenly disappeared. Hearing of it, and suspecting he had been spirited away by Dawsey, Joseph Preston went to Trenton, and, procuring a judge's order for Mulock's arrest as an absconding witness, caused a thorough search to be made for him in Jones and the adjoining counties. He himself visited Chalk Level, in Harnett County, and there found him, living again with his white wife. That lady had previously won and lost a second spouse, but, it appeared, was then in such straits for another husband, that she was willing to take up with her own cast-off household furniture. Whether a new marriage ceremony was performed, or not, I never learned; but I have been reliably informed that Mulock complained bitterly of his wife for having defrauded him of twenty-five of the fifty dollars she had agreed to pay as consideration for his again sharing her 'bed and board.' Mulock admitted having received four hundred dollars from Dawsey for absenting himself, and gave, as an excuse for accepting the bribe, his conviction that Mrs. Dawsey could not be found guilty on his testimony. After his arrest he was confined in the same jail with the 'retired' schoolmistress.