Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker

At home, Edgar dreams of Waldegrave, and remembers that Mary asked him to transcribe Waldegrave’s letters for her. However, giving the entire transcription to Mary will reveal some of Waldegrave’s previously unknown set of anti-religious that Waldegrave later renounced. He had asked Edgar to destroy these letters, but Edgar wouldn’t. Believing Mary is “unaccustomed to metaphysical refinements” like “others of [her] sex” (133), Edgar resolves to only give her excerpts.

He looks for the letters in a secret compartment that he, like Clithero, constructed, but finds it empty. Edgar believes someone has stolen the letters. His uncle says he heard someone walking upstairs.

Edgar searches the attic room but doesn’t find the letters. After his two sisters wake, he questions them, but they haven’t seen the letters or a thief. Rather than admit he might also be a sleepwalker, Edgar suspects Clithero stole the letters and decides to find him.   

While looking at the moon, Edgar encounters a visitor named Weymouth, who was friends with Waldegrave. They sit by the fire and Weymouth asks about Waldegrave’s will. Edgar answers that Waldegrave had no will, but all his money, about $8,000, was left to his sister, Mary.

Weymouth notes that Waldegrave was a teacher at a “negro free-school” (141) and asks if he changed professions to obtain this money, to which Edgar replies the source of the income is a mystery.