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
carried a sore bruise or two apiece they got from me the night
before, and seized the opportunity to pay them off upon her. So they
stripped her bare, and flogged her till her back was a mass of welts
and cuts, and then put her to bed. That bed she never left for two
months, and then came out the shadow of her former self. But the
Dutch doctor declared that the devil was whipped out of her, and
that she was entirely cured. A few months afterward the family had
the best of reasons for believing that they had whipped the devil
into her, instead of out of her.
After staying in New York a few days, I went to Dover, N.H., where I
had some acquaintances, and where I hoped to get into a medical
practice, which, with the help of my friends, I did very soon. I
lived quietly in that place all winter, earning a good living and
laying by some money. During the whole time I never heard a word
from Sarah. I wrote at least fifty letters to her, but as I learned
afterward, and, indeed, surmised at the time, every one of them was
intercepted by her father or brothers, and she did not know where I
was and so could not write to me. I left Dover in May and went down
to New York. I had some business there which was soon transacted,
and early in June I went over to New Jersey-to Oxford, a small place
near Belvidere.
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