I had plenty of money; but this kind of travelling is inexpensive, and, paying twenty-five cents for one or two meals a day, as I dared to get them, and sleeping in barns or under haystacks for nothing, my purse did not materially diminish. I was a good walker, and in the course of a week from the night when I left Keene, I found myself in Biddeford, Maine.
There was some sense of security in being in another State, and here I ventured to take the cars for Portland, where I staid two days, sending in the meantime for my trunk from Meredith Bridge, and getting it by express. Of course it went to a fictitious address at Meredith, and it came to me under the same name which I had registered in my hotel at Portland.
I did not mean to stay there long. My departure was hastened by the advice of a man who knew me, and told he also knew my New Hampshire scrape, and that I had better leave Portland as soon as possible. Half an hour after this good advice I was on my way by cars to Canada. In Canada I stayed in different small towns near the border, and “kept moving,” till I thought the New Hampshire matter had blown over a little, or at least till they had given me up as a “gone case,” and I then reappeared in Troy.
CHAPTER IX. MARRYING TWO MILLINERS.
BACK IN VERMONT—FRESH TEMPTATIONS—MARGARET BRADLEY—WINE AND WOMEN—A MOCK MARRIAGE IN TROY—THE FALSE CERTIFICATE—MEDICINE AND MILLINERY—ELIZA GURNSEY—A SPREE AT SARATOGA—MARRYING ANOTHER MILLINER—AGAIN ARRESTED OR BIGAMY—IN JAIL ELEVEN MONTHS—A TEDIOUS TRIAL—FOUND GUILTY—APPEAL TO SUPREME COURT—TRYING TO BREAK OUT OF JAIL—A GOVERNOR’S PROMISE—SECOND TRIAL—SENTENCE TO THREE YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT.
From Troy I went, first to Newburyport, Mass., where I had some business, and where I remained a week, and then returned to Troy again. Next I went to Bennington, Vt., to sell medicines and practice, and I found enough to occupy me there for full two months. From Bennington to Rutland, selling medicines on the way, and at Rutland I intended to stay for some time. My oldest son was there well established in the medical business, and I thought that both of us together might extend a wide practice and make a great deal of money.
No doubt we might have done so, if I had minded my medical business only, and had let matrimonial matters alone. I had just got rid of a worthless woman in New Hampshire with a very narrow escape from State prison. But, as my readers know by this time, all experience, even the bitterest, was utterly thrown away upon me; I seemed to get out of one scrape only to walk, with my eyes open, straight into another.
At the hotel where I went to board, there was temporarily staying a woman, about thirty-two years old, Margaret Bradly, by name, who kept a large millinery establishment in town. I became acquainted with her, and she told me that she owned a house in the place, in which she and her mother lived; but her mother had gone away on a visit, and as she did not like to live alone she had come to the hotel to stay for a few days till her mother returned. Margaret was a fascinating woman; she knew it, and it was my miserable fate to become intimate, altogether too intimate with this designing milliner.
I went to her store every day, sometimes two or three times a day, and she always had in her backroom, wine or something stronger to treat me with, and in the evening I saw her at the hotel. When her mother came back, and Margaret opened her house again, I was a constant visitor. I was once more caught; I was in love.