about to revisit England, in defiance of a warning that I shall be
there subjected to some peril which I refused to have defined, because
I am unwilling that any mean apprehension of personal danger should
enfeeble my nerves in the discharge of a stern and solemn duty. If I
overcome that peril, you will not be my heir; my testament will be
remodelled; this letter will be recalled and destroyed. I shall form
ties which promise me the happiness I have never hitherto found,
though it is common to all men,--the affections of home, the caresses
of children, among whom I may find one to whom hereafter I may
bequeath, in my knowledge, a far nobler heritage than my lands. In
that case, however, my first care would be to assure your own
fortunes. And the sum which this codicil assures to my betrothed
would be transferred to yourself on my wedding-day. Do you know why,
never having seen you, I thus select you for preference to all my
other kindred; why my heart, in writing thus, warms to your image?
Richard Strahan, your only sister, many years older than yourself--you
were then a child--was the object of my first love. We were to have
been wedded, for her parents deceived me into the belief that she
returned my affection. With a rare and nobler candour, she herself
informed me that her heart was given to another, who possessed not my
worldly gifts of wealth and station. In resigning my claims to her
hand, I succeeded in propitiating her parents to her own choice. I
obtained for her husband the living which he held, and I settled on
your sister the dower which, at her death, passed to you as the
brother to whom she had shown a mother's love, and the interest of
which has secured you a modest independence.

"If these lines ever reach you, recognize my title to reverential
obedience to commands which may seem to you wild, perhaps irrational;
and repay, as if a debt due froth your own lost sister, the affection