"Your letter surprises me only in its kindness and gentleness of tone. Under the circumstances I could have forgiven a good deal of harshness. For your forbearance, however, you have my hearty thanks. And now as to the subject matter of your note: I am sorry to say I can offer neither denial nor satisfactory explanation of the facts alleged against me. I must bear the blame that attaches to what I have done, and bearing that blame I know my duty to you and your family. I shall write by this mail to Miss Barksdale volunteering a release, which otherwise you would have a right to demand of me."
Sealing this and directing it, Robert came to the hardest task of all—the writing of a letter to Cousin Sudie.
"I hardly know how to write to you," he wrote. "Your generous faith in me in spite of everything is more than I had any right to expect, and more, I think, than you have any right, in justice to yourself, to give me. I thank you for it right heartily, but I feel that I must not accept it. When you listened to my words of love and gave them a place in your heart, I was a gentleman without reproach. Now a stain is upon my name, which I can never remove. The man to whom you promised your hand was not the absconding debtor who writes you this from a jail. I send this letter, therefore, to offer you a release from your engagement with me, if indeed any release be necessary. You cannot afford to know me or even to remember me hereafter. Forget me, then, or, if you cannot wholly forget, remember me only as an adventurer, who for a paltry sum sold his good name.
"Good-by. I wish you well with all my heart."
As he sealed these letters Robert felt that his hopes for the future were sealed up with them, and that the post which should bear them away would carry with it the better part of his life. And yet he did not wholly surrender himself to despair, as a weaker man might have done. The old life was gone from him forever. The only people whom he had known as in any sense his own would grasp his hand no more, and if they ever thought of him again it would be only to regret that they had known him at all. All this he felt keenly, but it did not follow that he should abandon himself, as a consequence. He was still a young man, and there was time enough for him to make a new life for himself—to find new friends and to do some worthy work in the world; and to the planning of this new life he at once addressed himself.
He would teach no longer, and now that he had cut himself loose from that profession there was opportunity to do something at the business which he had found so agreeable of late. He would devote himself hereafter wholly to writing, and at the first opportunity he would become a regular member of the staff of some paper. Even if his earnings with his pen should prove small, what did that matter? He could never think of marrying now, and a very little would suffice to supply all his wants, his habits of life being simple and regular. It stung him when he remembered that there was a stain upon his name which could never be removed; but that, he knew, he must bear, and so he resolved to bear it bravely, as it becomes a man to bear all his burdens.
With thoughts like these the stalwart young fellow sank to sleep on the bed assigned him in the jail.