Transcriber's Notes.
Reading edition
The following corrections have been made in the text:
Minor punctuation errors corrected: added several periods, removed extraneous quotes.
Occasional inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained.
A few instances of exclamation points at the end of questions have been retained.
⭘ – "immiment" corrected to "imminent" (peril was imminent.)
⭘ – "loyality" corrected to "loyalty" (faith in your loyalty,)
⭘ – added "you" (I hope you are well, Carrie)
⭘ – duplicated word removed 'was' (hope of escape was presented)
⭘ – "gnardian" replaced with "guardian" (with his new guardian)
⭘ – "power?" corrected to "power!" (get him into my power!)
⭘ – "it?" corrected to "it!" (Gave a thousand dollars for it!")
⭘ – Speech marks removed from "And two thousand..." and "He doesn't know....", retained around "How long have you had it?"