After thanking God for that marvellous deliverance, I went to bed and took the needed rest.
But what was the priest LeBelle doing in that very moment? Unable to sleep after the awful perjury he had just made, he had watched the arrival of the trains from Chicago with an anxious mind, for he was aware through the confessions he had heard, that there were two persons in that city who knew his plot and his false oath; and though he had the promises from them that they would never reveal it to anybody, he was not without some fearful apprehensions that I might, by some way or other, become acquainted with his abominable conspiracy. Not long after the arrival of the trains from Chicago, he came down from his room to see in the book where travelers register their names, if there was any newcomers from Chicago, and what was his dismay when he saw the first name entered was “Philomene Moffat!” That very name, Philomene Moffat, who some time before, had gone to confess to him that she had heard the whole plot from his own lips, when he had promised 160 acres of land to persuade his sister to perjure herself in order to destroy me. A deadly presentiment chilled the blood in his veins! “Would it be possible that this girl is here to reveal and prove my perjury before the world?”
He immediately sent for her, when she was just coming from meeting Mr. Lincoln.
“Miss Philomene Moffat here!” he exclaimed, when he saw her. “What are you coming here for, this night?” he said.
“You will know it, sir, to-morrow morning,” she answered
“Ah! wretched girl! you come to destroy me?” he exclaimed.
She replied: “I do not come to destroy you, for you are already destroyed. Mr. Lincoln knows everything.”
“Oh! my God! my God!” he exclaimed, striking his forehead with his hands. Then taking a big bundle of bank notes, from his pocket-book, he said: “Here are one hundred dollars for you, if you take the morning train and go back to Chicago.”
“If you would offer me as much gold as this house could contain, I would not go,” she replied.
He then left her abruptly, ran to the sleeping-room of Spink, and told him: “Withdraw your suit against Chiniquy; we are lost; he knows all.”