Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/400

 poverty, ever envying the wealth of others. You are better without me, Walter, you are, indeed! Our ways of life will be very different, and we shall never come across each other in any probability. If we should, I hope we shall meet as friends. I am sure it will not be very long before you recognise the wisdom of the course I am now taking, and are grateful to me for having taken it. You are full of talent, which you will now doubtless turn to good account, and of worthy aspirations which you will find some one to sympathise with, and share the upward career which I am sure is before you. I thought I could have done as much at one time, but I know now that I could not, and I should be only acting basely and wickedly towards you, though you will not think it more basely and wickedly than I am now acting with you, if I had gone on pretending that I could, and had burdened you for life with a soured and discontented woman. I have no more to say.

"You do not repent of what you said to me this morning, Marian?" said Mr. Creswell, in a whisper, as he took her into dinner.

"On the contrary," she replied in the same tone, "I am too happy to have been able to gratify you by saying it."

"What has happened with Miss A.?" whispered Gertrude to Maud, at the same time; "I don't like the look in her eyes!"

And certainly they did look triumphant, almost insolently so, when their glances fell on the girls.

continue our list of Will stories, commenced last week, with an eccentric justice in Norfolk, who died at the age of ninety, and required to be interred in his wedding shirt, his full suit and bag-wig, his silver buckles in his shoes, his cane in his hand, and black ribbons in his sleeve bands. Exactly a hundred years ago a widow Pratt died in George-street, Hanover-square, and left injunctions that her body was to be burned to ashes. Some testators, like Mr. Morgan, of Wales, have left thirty-one calves'-heads to the poor, to be given on his birthday; some have left money, to be given out annually on their own tombstones.

A Mr. Farstone, of Alton, having no relations, left his seven thousand pounds to the first man of his name who should wed a woman of the same name, and the money was to be paid down on the day of the marriage. Eccentric testators, however, are not likely to know that the courts look very sharply after their freaks, and are inclined if possible to revise such dispositions.

Readers of Boswell will recal that laborious lord of session (Lord Hailes), to whom Johnson used to send messages of turgid encomium. On his death, when he left an only daughter, no will could be found. This seemed a sad hardship, and though diligent search was made, it was unsuccessful. Miss Dalrymple was preparing to leave the house, and the heir-at-law about entering on the property which had come to him so unexpectedly, when some servants were sent over to another house of the late judge's in New-street, to put it in order. As they were closing the window-shutters, a paper dropped out from one of the panels, which proved to be the missing will. The surprise of this denouement, acting in two different directions, was excessive. But indeed the history of lost and found wills is one of the most exciting pages of romance. There are not a few families in the kingdom who owe success in some will litigation to the discovery by a dream of a missing paper, and instances have been so repeated, that, however the matter is to be explained, it is impossible to doubt their truth. Here is a well-authenticated one, told by the chief actor himself, a famous Liverpool preacher, to a friend of the writer's.

When the Liverpool preacher was a very obscure curate, he was taking a journey on horseback in very severe weather. He lost his way, and wandered about drenched, cold, and scarcely knowing what to do. Night came on, and he resolved to entrust the matter to his horse—dropping the reins on his neck. The horse soon brought him to a sort of lodge-gate, where he asked his way, and where he was invited to ride up to the great house, where he might perhaps find shelter. He did so, and was received in the kitchen with menial hospitality, and allowed to dry himself. During the evening, the butler mentioned to his master that there was a parson below, in a bad way indeed, and the master of the house politely sent down and asked him up. Further, he insisted on his staying to dinner and for the night. The clergyman consented, and went to bed in the conventional long chamber, and under the friendly shelter of the conventional four-poster; which, also true to the convention, he could not help likening to a catafalque. There he slept profoundly, while his weary and buffeted horse enjoyed his repose in a comfortable stable.

During the night the parson dreamed—dreamed that he was going over the house. He went up a stair with an oaken balustrade, and found himself entering an old picture-gallery, with portraits ranged down both sides. As he looked, one of them seemed to come out from the wall, and a paper dropped down, which, with the indistinctness of all dreams, seemed to leave the impression on him that it was of vast importance. This, he knew, without getting any