"Well, then,' says I, 'it is this:  as I told you before in a heat,  that I was not your lawful wife, and that our children were not  legal children, so I must let you know now in calmness and in  kindness, but with affliction enough, that I am your own sister,  and you my own brother, and that we are both the children of  our mother now alive, and in the house, who is convinced of  the truth of it, in a manner not to be denied or contradicted.'

I saw him turn pale and look wild; and I said, 'Now remember  your promise, and receive it with presence of mind; for who  could have said more to prepare you for it than I have done?  However, I called a servant, and got him a little glass of rum  (which is the usual dram of that country), for he was just  fainting away.  When he was a little recovered, I said to him,  'This story, you may be sure, requires a long explanation, and  therefore, have patience and compose your mind to hear it out,  and I'll make it as short as I can'; and with this, I told him  what I thought was needful of the fact, and particularly how  my mother came to discover it to me, as above.  'And now,  my dear,' says I, 'you will see reason for my capitulations,  and that I neither have been the cause of this matter, nor could  be so, and that I could know nothing of it before now.'

'I am fully satisfied of that,' says he, 'but 'tis a dreadful surprise  to me; however, I know a remedy for it all, and a remedy  that shall put an end to your difficulties, without your going to  England.'  'That would be strange,' said I, 'as all the rest.'   'No, no,' says he, 'I'll make it easy; there's nobody in the way  of it but myself.'  He looked a little disordered when he said  this, but I did not apprehend anything from it at that time,  believing, as it used to be said, that they who do those things  never talk of them, or that they who talk of such things never  do them.

But things were not come to their height with him, and I  observed he became pensive and melancholy; and in a word,  as I thought, a little distempered in his head.  I endeavoured  to talk him into temper, and to reason him into a kind of scheme  for our government in the affair, and sometimes he would be  well, and talk with some courage about it; but the weight of  it lay too heavy upon his thoughts, and, in short, it went so far  that he made attempts upon himself, and in one of them had  actually strangled himself and had not his mother come into  the room in the very moment, he had died; but with the help  of a Negro servant she cut him down and recovered him.

Things were now come to a lamentable height in the family. &nbs