it may be your pleasure to send for him."

They parted in silence; the divine too much displeased, and my ancestor
too much grieved, to indulge in words of ceremony.

When my father found himself alone, he gazed furtively about the room,
to assure himself that the rebuking spirit of his wife had not taken
a shape less questionable than air, and then, he mused for at least an
hour, very painfully, on all the principal occurrences of the night. It
is said that occupation is a certain solace for grief, and so it proved
to be in the present case; for luckily my father had made up that very
day his private account of the sum total of his fortune. Sitting down,
therefore, to the agreeable task, he went through the simple process of
subtracting from it the amount for which he had just drawn, and, finding
that he was still master of seven hundred and eighty-two thousand three
hundred and eleven pounds odd shillings and even pence, he found a very
natural consolation for the magnitude of the sum he had just given away,
by comparing it with the magnitude of that which was left.

CHAPTER III. OPINIONS OF OUR AUTHOR'S ANCESTOR, TOGETHER WITH SOME OF
HIS OWN, AND SOME OF OTHER PEOPLE'S.

Dr. Etherington was both a pious man and a gentleman. The second son
of a baronet of ancient lineage, he had been educated in most of the
opinions of his caste, and possibly he was not entirely above its
prejudices; but, this much admitted, few divines were more willing
to defer to the ethics and principles of the Bible than himself. His
humility had, of course, a decent regard to station; his charity was
judiciously regulated by the articles of faith; and his philanthropy was
of the discriminating character that became a warm supporter of church
and state.

In accepting the trust which he was now obliged to assume, he had
yielded purely to a benevolent wish to smooth the dying pillow of my
mother. Acquainted with the character of her husband, he had committed a
sort of pious fraud, in attaching the condition of the endowment to his
consent; for, notwithstanding the becoming language of his own rebuke,
the promise, and all the other little attendant circumstances of the
night, it might be questioned which felt the most surprise after
the draft was presented and duly honored, he who found himself in
possession, or he who found himself deprived, of the sum of ten thousand
pounds sterling. Still Dr. Etherington acted with the most scrupulou