to India, and in new connections forgotten the old ties at home. Letters
from abroad too, miscarry; and it was not improbable that the wanderer
might have written repeatedly, and receiving no answer to his
communications, imagined that the dissoluteness of his life had deprived
him of the affections of his family, and, deserving so well to have the
proffer of renewed intercourse rejected, believed that it actually was
so. These, and a hundred similar conjectures, found favour in the eyes of
the young traveller; but the chances of a fatal accident, or sudden
death, he pertinaciously refused at present to include in the number of
probabilities. Had his father been seized with a mortal illness on the
road, was it not likely that he would, in the remorse occasioned in the
hardiest by approaching death, have written to his brother, and
recommending his child to his care, have apprised him of the addition to
his fortune? Walter then did not meditate embarrassing his present
journey by those researches among the dead, which the worthy Courtland
had so considerately recommended to his prudence: should his expedition,
contrary to his hopes, prove wholly unsuccessful, it might then be well
to retrace his steps and adopt the suggestion. But what man, at the age
of twenty-one, ever took much precaution on the darker side of a question
on which his heart was interested?

With what pleasure, escaping from conjecture to a more ultimate
conclusion--did he, in recalling those words, in which his father had
more than hinted to Courtland of his future amendment, contemplate
recovering a parent made wise by years and sober by misfortunes, and
restoring him to a hearth of tranquil virtues and peaceful enjoyments! He
imaged to himself a scene of that domestic happiness, which is so perfect
in our dreams, because in our dreams monotony is always excluded from the
picture. And, in this creation of Fancy, the form of Ellinor--his bright-
eyed and gentle cousin, was not the least conspicuous. Since his