Transcriber's Notes.

The following corrections have been made in the text:
Minor punctuation errors corrected: added several periods, removed extraneous quotes.
Occasional inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained.
A few instances of exclamation points at the end of questions have been retained.
[⭘] "immiment" corrected to "imminent"
(peril was imminent.)
[⭘] "loyality" corrected to "loyalty"
(faith in your loyalty,)
[⭘] added "you"
(I hope you are well, Carrie)
[⭘] duplicated word removed 'was'
(hope of escape was presented)
[⭘] "gnardian" replaced with "guardian"
(with his new guardian)
[⭘] "power?" corrected to "power!"
(get him into my power!)
[⭘] "it?" corrected to "it!"
(Gave a thousand dollars for it!")
[⭘] Speech marks removed from "And two thousand..." and "He doesn't know....", retained around "How long have you had it?"