“Read it, sir,” he said, in a low shivering voice. “Slow, please. I doen’t know as I can understand.”
In the midst of the silence of death, I read thus, from a blotted letter:
“ ‘When you, who love me so much better than I ever have deserved, even when my mind was innocent, see this, I shall be far away.’ ”
“I shall be fur away,” he repeated slowly. “Stop! Em’ly fur away. Well!”
“ ‘When I leave my dear home—my dear home—oh, my dear home!—in the morning,’ ”
the letter bore date on the previous night:
“ ‘—it will be never to come back, unless he brings me back a lady. This will be found at night, many hours after, instead of me. Oh, if you knew how my heart is torn. If even you, that I have wronged so much, that never can forgive me, could only know what I suffer! I am too wicked to write about