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long-dreaded tidings of my good grandmother’s decease had arrived; and as her nearest of kin, and only heir, I had been summoned to appear personally before the judge, and enter upon the management of my new inheritance. Official business, however, detained me for several months in a distant part of the country; at last I left the capital with its cares of office behind me, and found myself, after several days travelling, seated at the table d’ hote of Binsenwerder waiting for the arrival of fresh post-horses.

Opposite me sat a little, dry, yellow-faced gentleman, who, nevertheless, seemed to have a capital appetite, with which he at the same time contrived to conjoin no small portion of garrulity. I soon discovered from the conversation which he kept up with the landlord and the rest of the company that he was a citizen of Klarenburg,—the very town in which my late respected grandmother had spent the latter half of her life, and which he had just left that morning. In the flow of the stranger’s eloquence the conversation soon turned upon my deceased relative. Many of the persons present appeared to have known her; and it was a grateful feeling to me to hear her praises fall from so many unprejudiced lips. He of the yellow visage, however—who appeared from his conversation, to hold the office of Recorder in the little town just mentioned—did not approve of the terms of the good old woman’s will, though he protested that with