Released at last from durance vile and placed on
board of an Erie canal boat, on my way to Canada, I
for a moment breathed the sweets of liberty. Perhaps
the interval gave me opportunity to indulge in
certain reveries which I had hitherto sternly dismissed.
Henry Breckinridge Folair, a consistent copperhead,
captain of the canal-boat, again and again
pressed that suit I had so often rejected.

It was a lovely moonlight night. We sat on the
deck of the gliding craft. The moonbeam and the
lash of the driver fell softly on the flanks of the offhorse,
and only the surging of the two-rope broke
the silence. Folair's arm clasped my waist. I suffered
it to remain. Placing in my lap a small but
not ungrateful roll of checkerberry lozenges, he took
the occasion to repeat softly in my ear the words of
a motto he had just unwrapped—with its graceful covering
of the tissue paper—from a sugar almond.
The heart of the wicked little rebel, Mary McGillup,
was won!

The story of Mary McGillup is done. I might
have added the journal of my husband, Henry
Breckinridge Folair, but as it refers chiefly to his
freights, and a schedule of his passengers, I have
been obliged, reluctantly, to suppress it.

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

It is due to my friends to say that I have been requested
not to write this book. Expressions have
reached my ears, the reverse of complimentary. I
have been told that its publication will probably ensure
my banishment for life. Be it so. If the cause
for which I labored have been subserved, I am content.

London, May, 1865.

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