[...]thus forcefully pressed, consented, but exacted the promise that he would t tell the Fritzingers until his return from the trip he was on the eve of taking. In a few days he left Camden. His vessel was wrecked off the coast of Maine, and he was buried where he washed ashore. His hasty marriage and unlooked-for death prevented him from making the intended provision for his wife, and as she shrank from any contest with his family, all that was left to her was his name and the cherished memory of her one brief love. During Captain Fritzinger's nine years of blindness, and through all his long sickness, Mary's ingrained habit of devotion to one person made her somewhat forgetful of others; and dearly as she loved the boys who called her mother, their happiness was too often sacrificed to their father's infirmities.[...].