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 of every body else, he was mortal, and probably the sooner for his profession; and thought that, to use his own phrase, "a bird in hand was worth two in the bush; and the money, to which he was eventually heir, was as well in his own custody." The laird, with a very moderate understanding, and mild milkiness of disposition, had a heart less contracted by interested selfishness, than debarred from benevolent exertion, by feeble timidity, or misguided by family vanity. His heiress-hunting adventures did not arise so much from grasping avarice, as from a desire of aggrandizing the house of Etterick. His pecuniary anxieties resulted less from the desire of accumulation, the means of gratifying which he had fully in his power, than the fear of incurring difficulties, for which there were, in his situation, no probable grounds. Hamilton had written him on