“Through Tom Hardy, who left Atlanta for Palatka, I sent her money regularly and wrote occasionally, while she replied through the same medium.  Loving, pitiful letters they were, and would have moved the heart of any man who was not a brute and steeped to the dregs in pride and cowardice.  I burned them as soon as I read them, for fear they might be found.  I told her to do the same with mine, and have no doubt she did.  I did mean fair about the school, and was making inquiries, slowly, it is true, as my heart was not in it, and I had nearly decided upon Lexington, Kentucky, when the birth of a little girl changed everything, but did not reconcile me to the situation.  I never cared for children,—­disliked them rather than otherwise,—­and the fact that I was a father did not move me a whit.

“There was a letter imploring me to come and see our baby, and I promised to go, with a vague idea that I might some time keep my word.  But I didn’t.  I had no love for Eudora, none for the child; and still a thought of it haunted me continually, and was the cause of my giving the grounds and the school-house to the town.  I wanted to expiate my sin, and at the same time increase my popularity, for at that time I was trying to make up my mind to acknowledge my marriage and bring Eudora home.  The poor girl never knew it, for on the day of the lawn party she was buried.  Tom Hardy wrote me she was dead, and that he was about starting for Europe, and had given Jake, a faithful servant of the family, my address.  God knows my remorse when I heard it, and still I put off going for the child until Jake wrote me that the grandmother, too, had died, and added that it was not fitting for the little girl to be brought up with Crackers and negroes.  He did not know that I had heard of Eudora’s death from Tom, and was waiting for—­I did not know what, unless it was to hear from him personally.  There was more manliness in that negro’s nature than in mine, and I knew it, and was ashamed of myself, and went for my daughter and stood by my wife’s grave, and heard from Jake the story of her life, and knew she had kept her promise and never opened her lips, except to say that ’it was all right.’

“The people believed her for the most part, and anathematized the unknown man who had deserted her, but they could not heap upon me all the odium I deserved.  Why the story has never reached here I hardly know, except that intercourse between the North and the extreme South was not as easy as it is now, and then the war swept off Tom Hardy and most likely all who knew of the marriage.

“When I brought Amy home I was too proud to acknowledge her as my daughter.  The Harrises and the palmetto clearing stood in the way, and I let people think what they chose, hating myself with an added hatred for allowing a stain to rest on her birth.  I was fond of her in a way, and angry when she married Candida, who died in Rome.  Then she married a Smith, who took her round the country