friend of my life, for the first time in the twenty-odd years of your
existence. Once as a child you saw me, and you have doubtless heard my
name from your mother's people from time to time; but I can scarcely
hope that any knowledge of my private life has come to you. It will be
easy, then, for you to pardon an old man for giving you, in this
fashion, the confidence he has never been able to bestow in the flesh.

"When you read this epistle, my dear Agatha, I shall have stepped into
that next mystery, which is Death. Indeed, the duty which I am now
discharging serves as partial preparation for that very event. This
duty is to make you heir to my house and estate and to certain
accessory funds which will enable you to keep up the place.

"You may regard this act, possibly, as the idiosyncrasy of an
unbalanced mind; it is certain that some of my kinsfolk will do so.
But while I have been able to bear up under _their_ greater or less
displeasure for many years, I find myself shrinking before the
possibility of dying absolutely unknown and forgotten by you. Your
mother, Agatha Shaw, of blessed memory now for many years, was my ward
and pupil after the death of your grandfather. I think I may say
without undue self-congratulation that few women of their time have
enjoyed as sound a scheme of education as your mother. She had a
knowledge of mathematics, could construe both in Latin and Greek, and
had acquired a fair mastery of the historic civilization of the Greeks,
Egyptians and ancient Babylonians. While these attainments would
naturally be insufficient for a man's work in life, yet for a woman
they were of an exceptional order.

"Sufficient to say that in your mother's character these noteworthy
abilities were supplemented by gracious, womanly arts; and when she