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WILLIAM THE THIRD.

Cowper, who was already married. She at length wrote chap.

XXV.

to him in language which she never would have used if 1699iher intellect had not been disordered. He, like an honestman, took no advantage of her unhappy state of mind,and did his best to avoid her. His prudence mortifiedher to such a degree that on one occasion she went intofits. It was necessary, however, that he should see her,when he came to Hertford at the spring assizes of 1699.

For he had been entrusted with some money which wasdue to her on mortgage. He called on her for this pur-pose late one evening, and delivered a bag of gold toher. She pressed him to be the guest of her family; buthe excused himself and retired. The next morning shewas found dead among the stakes of a mill dam on thestream called the Priory River. That she had destroyedherself there could be no reasonable doubt. The coroner’sinquest found that she had drowned herself while in astate of mental derangement. But her family was un-willing to admit that she had shortened her own life,and looked about for somebody who might be accusedof murdering her. The last person who could be provedto have been in her company was Spencer Cowper. Itchanced that two attorneys and a scrivener, who hadcome down from town to the Hertford assizes, had beenoverheard, on that unhappy night, talking over theirwine about the charms and flirtations of the handsomeQuaker girl, in the light way in which such subjectsare sometimes discussed even at the circuit tables and

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