Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. I Must ask the reader to imagine that a period of three years has elapsed since the close of the last chapter. Brother Frank and myself are still living at uncle Adam's, and have become so thoroughly domiciled there as to regard it as our home. During all this time our lives had been one constant scene of peace—scarcely a ripple had occurred upon the sui'face of the stream of time as we quietly glided down its surface toward eternity, and the only strange circumstance I have to record of those three years is the fact that, in all that time we had not once heard from home. I do not know whether uncle Adam or aunt Kittie had heard from there or not; I suppose they must have done so at some time or other, but if so, they never said anything about it to us. For some time we thought very strange that mother did not write to us, but we finally came to attribute it to indifference toward ourselves, and thus comparatively dismissed the subject from our thoughts. I have since learned to believe that this long silence was brought about by the machinations of Captain Lake, and was part of a deliberately formed plan to harass mother to an untimely grave, and thus get more complete control of the property of which he was steadily and systematically robbing us. God forgive me if I judge him wrongfully; he has grievonsly wronged me and mine, and yet I would not willingly or knowingly charge him with a single crime of which he is innocent. About three years from the time of our last arrival in New Orleans, uncle Adam one day brought home with him a gentleman from the neighborhood of our old home ; one who intimately knew all our family. Of course, the most eager inquiries relative to the family were at once made. Judge of my horror and surprise upon being informed by him that my...