6. CHAPTER VI.
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 off-horse,
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.
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.
