looked at the end of it—'Colonel James!' Then I recognised the writing. I had the other letter open in a moment, (from my mother, perhaps! from my father!), and had glanced at it. 'Dead!' I glanced on:
'. . . Sunday night . . . sympathy . . . last thing . . . spoke . . . name . . . reparation . . . heir . . . in all something more than £1,000 . . . beg to enclose . . .'
I looked up.
'Great God,' I thought, 'what's this?'
I read the letter: then re-read it, more slowly. This is what struck me in it. Colonel James had died on Saturday night: had left me his fortune, and a letter—this letter enclosed, of the sending of which to me was almost the last thing he had spoken.
I took up the foreign-papered letter from my knee and began to skim it:
'. . . I have, after some thought, concluded that . . . proper and seemly.. . . Your father and mother . . . the regiment stationed . . . theatre in London . . . against the advice of all . . . married. [Pause for a moment.] . . . Quartered . . . Cork . . . unhappiness owing to religious . . . I . . . and the attentions of a . . . Captain Melvil . . . exchanged . . . Guards . . . of whom I frequently warned . . . but in vain . . . shortly ordered to Dungarvan and subsequently . . . Guernsey. I regret to have . . . attentions continued, and I was compelled to speak to your father . . . neglected warning, and . . . next day . . . scene with your mother, in which . . . common talk. I . . . could do no more, and remained. . . . One night . . . dining at mess with . . . walked home togeth . . . and . . . silence in the house. She was gone. 1 could not have imagined that anything could have made your father, a man naturally of the most praiseworthy self restraint, and rendered doubly so by his steadfast relig . . . sat down and cried like a child. I felt that I could not leave him in this condition, and accordingly, after having done all I could to comfort him by religi . . . so completely prostrated by the blow that I began
