any date this time.

"My dear Gil, it's nearly a week since I wrote the last lines, and I've
been in bed ever since. I'm afraid there's no hope for me; in plain words,
I believe I'm dying. To you I leave the duty I am not allowed to perform.
Marian is living, and in England. I believe that scoundrelly father of hers
told me the truth when he declared that. You will not rest till you find
her, I know; and you will protect her fortune from that wretch. God bless
you, faithful old friend! Heaven knows how I yearn for the sight of your
honest face, lying here among strangers, to be buried in a foreign land.
See that my wife pays Mrs. Branston the money I borrowed to come here; and
tell her that I was grateful to her, and thought of her on my dying bed.
To my wife I send no message. She knows that I loved her; but how dear she
has been to me in this bitter time of separation, she can never know.

"You will find a bulky MS. at my chambers, in the bottom drawer on the
right side of my desk. It is my Life of Swift--unfinished as my own life.
If, after reading it, you should think it worth publishing, as a
fragment, with my name to it, I should wish you to arrange its
publication. I should be glad to leave my name upon something."

In a stranger's hand, and upon another sheet of paper, Gilbert read the
end of his friend's history.

"Sir,--I regret to inform you that your friend Mr. Saltram expired
at eleven o'clock last night (Wednesday, May 2nd), after an
illness of a fortnight's duration, throughout which I gave him my
best attention as his medical adviser. He will be buried in the
Cypress-hill Cemetery, on Long Island, at his own request; and he
has left sufficient funds for the necessary expenses, and the
payment of his hotel bill, as well as my own small claim against
him. Any surplus which may be left I shall forward to you, when
these payments have been made. I enclose a detailed account of the
case for your satisfaction, and have the honour to be, sir,

"Yours very obediently,

"SILAS WARREN, M.D.

"113 Sixteenth-street, New York,

"May 3, 186--."

This was all.

And Gilbert had to carry these tidings to Marian. For a time he was
almost paralyzed by the blow. He had loved this man as a brother; if he
had ever doubted the strength of his attachment to John Saltram, he knew
it now. But the worst of all was, that one bitter fact--Marian must be
told, and by