“Desperate, distracted, what could I do but forge my uncle’s name for the amount, taking the precaution to draw from three or four banks where he had funds deposited, and this I did without a thought of the consequences; but when I woke to the peril of my situation I was mad with fear, and determined to run away. But first I wrote to Anna, telling her I was going, but withheld the reason why. After the letter was sent I was seized with a terror lest she by some means should betray me, and so I be brought to justice. My love for her was strong, but dread of a prison life was stronger. Of Uncle Jason I asked and received permission to visit Morrisville for a week, and when I left him he thought I was going home, but I went instead to Boston, reaching there in the night, and next morning hiring a boy to take a note to Anna. She was alone when it was delivered, as the family were out on some shopping expedition. In much alarm she came to the Revere, where I was to meet her, and there the horrible truth was revealed that she was the wife of a felon. She had not received my letter, and what I told her was wholly unexpected. She did not faint, nor scream, nor even reproach me with my sin. She merely sank upon her knees and prayed that I might be forgiven, while into her eyes and face there stole a look which I know now to have been the germ of insanity which afterwards came upon her. “‘Anna,’ I said, when her prayer was ended and she sat with her face upon the table, ‘I am going to England in a vessel which sails to-night, and from there to California, assuming the name of John Maxwell, and you must not betray me.’ “Betray you! O Robert!” and the face she lifted up looked as grieved as if I had struck her. “‘I know you will not do it voluntarily,’ I said, ‘but you must not make yourself liable to be questioned. No one knows I am here. No one knows you are my wife, and no one must know it. Not yet, at least not till it is settled somehow, and I come back to claim you, or send for you to join me.’ “Again she looked wistfully at me, and I continued: ‘If Uncle Jason knew you were my wife, he would question and cross-question you until he frightened it out of you, and I should be captured. I deserve to go to prison, I know, but Anna, darling, think how terrible for one so young to be shut out from this world, wearing my life away. Promise, Anna, and I will be a better man; I will earn enough to pay it back. Promise, if, indeed, you love me.’ “I was kneeling at her feet, sueing almost for my life. I was her husband, and she loved me, erring as I was, and she promised at last to keep her marriage a secret until I said she might tell. I ought to have been satisfied with her word, but each moment the dread of arrest grew greater, and taking the Bible which lay upon the table, I said, ‘Swear with your hand on this.’