my very grasp, and the losing all!

We reached the hotel in Belvidere at about half- past two o'clock in
the morning, wearied, worn, bruised and disheartened. My man had not
suffered nearly as severely as I had; the bulk of their blows fell
upon me, and I had the sorest body and the worst looking face I had
ever exhibited. I rested one day and then hurried on to New York. Of
course, I had no means of knowing the feelings or condition of the
loved girl from whom I had been so suddenly and so violently parted.
I only learned from an Easton man whom I knew and whom I met in the
city, that "Sarah Scheimer was sick"-that was all; the man said he
did'nt know the family very well, but he had heard that Miss
Scheimer had been "out of her head, if not downright crazy."

Crazy indeed! How mad and how miserable that poor girl was made by
her own family, I did not know till months afterward, and then I had
the terrible story from her own lips. It seems that when her father
and his gang returned from pursuing me, as they did a little way up
the road towards Belvidere, they found her almost frantic. They
locked her up in her room that night with no one to say so much as a
kind word to her. How she passed that night, after the scenes she
had witnessed, and the abuse with which her father and brothers had
loaded her before they thrust her into her prison, may be imagined.
The next day she was wrought up to a frenzy. Her parents pronounced
her insane, and called in a Dutch doctor who examined her and said
she was "bewitched!" And this is the remedy he proposed as a cure;
he advised that she should be soundly flogged, and the devil whipped
out of her. Her family, intensely angered at her for the trouble she
had made them, or rather had caused them to make for themselves,
were only too glad to accept the advice. The old man and two sons