ber
and Hallibury was sent for, and came swiftly to perform his duty to the
dying man. He was closeted with Mr. Whitelaw for some time, and did his
best to awaken Christian feelings in the farmer's breast; but it was
doubtful if his pious efforts resulted in much. The soul of Stephen
Whitelaw was in his barns and granaries, with his pigs and cattle. He
could not so much as conceive the idea of a world in which there should
be no such thing as sale and profit.

His end came quietly enough at last, and Ellen was free. Her time of
bondage had been very brief, yet she felt herself twenty years older than
she had seemed before that interval of misery began.

When the will was read by Mr. Pivott on the day of Stephen Whitelaw's
funeral, it was found that the farmer had left his wife two hundred a
year, derivable from real estate. To Mrs. Rebecca Tadman, his cousin, he
bequeathed an annuity of forty pounds, the said annuity to revert to
Ellen upon Mrs. Tadman's death should Ellen survive. The remaining
portion of his real estate he bequeathed to one John James Harris, a
distant cousin, who owned a farm in Wiltshire, with whom Stephen Whitelaw
had spent some years of his boyhood, and from whom he had learned the
science of agriculture. It was less from any love the testator bore John
James Harris than from a morbid jealousy of his probable successor Frank
Randall, that the Wiltshire farmer had been named as residuary legatee.
If Stephen Whitelaw could have left his real estate to the Infirmary, he
would have so left it. His personal estate, consisting of divers
investments in railway shares and other kinds of stock, all of a very
safe kind, was to be realized, and the entire proceeds devoted to the
erection of an additional wing for the extension of Malsham Infirmary,
and his gift was to be recorded on a stone tablet in a conspicuous
position on the front of that building. This, which was an absolute
condition attached to the bequest, had been set forth with great
minuteness by the lawyer, at the special desire of his client.

Mr. Carley's expression of opinion after hearing this will read need not
be recorded here. It was forcible, to say the least of it; and Mr.
Pivott, the Malsham solicitor, protested against such language as an
outrage upon the finer feelings of our nature.

"Some degree of disappointment is perhaps excusable upon your part, my
dear sir," said the lawyer, who wished to keep the widow for his client,
and