Logan remained in the neighborhood, meeting his wife at the Smiths' until early in February, when he left to join Washington's troops at Morristown. A week after his departure, Jackson Pepper returned home, and died suddenly of apoplexy a month later.
But even before Logan left the neighborhood, poor Sarah had cause to bitterly repent the step she had taken. Logan had proven a violent-tempered, dissolute, selfish man. He was constantly in want of money, and when Sarah supplied him, he would resort to the tavern in the village, and drink and gamble with a lot of low companions whose society seemed more congenial to him than that of the poor, deluded Sarah.
In April, Logan returned to the neighborhood, and he and Sarah were then quietly but openly married. Immediately afterward she quitted Chestnut Hall, and went to live in Philadelphia, her husband returning to his regiment. She only saw him after that at infrequent intervals and for a few hours at a time. His only object on these occasions appeared to be to extort money from her. Then, in June, came tidings of his having fallen in the battle of Monmouth.
"Were there two John Logans?" Abner asked huskily, his lips pallid, the shadow of a great horror upon his face.
"That was what both these poor women at first thought," answered Dr. Dudley, sadly; "but they were soon convinced otherwise."
"How was that?" asked Abner, feeling as if the ground which had hitherto seemed solid was giving way under his feet.
"Your mother," Richard continued, "had with her a miniature of your father. She showed it to Sarah, who recognized it as that of the man she had married. A further description of the man tended to prove this more conclusively—age, height, build, all corresponded. Logan, according to both women, was very tall and slender, had wavy dark hair, dark gray eyes, was a native of Kenelworth, Pennsylvania, and was twenty-eight years old at the time of his death. Soon after your mother came to us, I wrote to an old resident of this village, Kenelworth, and learned from him that he knew of but one family of Logans who had ever lived in the place. That was the family of Ezra Logan, who had been dead several years, and had left two daughters and one son. Both daughters had married and removed to a distant section of the country, and the son, John Logan, had been killed at the battle of Monmouth, in June, 1778."
"My God, my God!" Abner exclaimed, turning faint and sick, while the perspiration stood in great drops upon his forehead and about his drawn lips. He threw himself into a chair, and buried his face in his hands.
"My poor lad! my dear son!" said his uncle, sobbingly, standing over the stricken boy, and laying a hand tenderly on the bowed head. "Would that you could have been spared this. I have tried, God knows I have tried, to hide this from you."
"Yes, yes!" muttered Abner, grasping his uncle's hand, but not looking up, "you have done the best you could for me. You are all I have left now, you and Aunt Rachel. All else is gone. I a bastard! My father, whose memory I have revered as that of a brave soldier who gave his life for his country, a dastardly libertine! And my precious young mother—oh, my God in heaven! I can not bear this. Would that I were lying by your side, my poor, innocent, deceived mother; or, better still, that I had never been born! I have no name, no place in the world!" and as he thought of Betty, his heart was wrung with such agony as few can ever feel.