am saving for my
debts, and I shall live, I trust, to pay off every farthing. First,
for my debt to you I send an order, not signed in my name, but equally
valid, on Messrs. Drummond, for 250 pounds. Repay yourself what the boy
has cost. Let him be educated to get his own living,--if clever, as a
scholar or a lawyer; if dull, as a tradesman. Whatever I may gain, he
will have his own way to make. I ought to tell you the story connected
with his birth; but it is one of pain and shame, and, on reflection, I
feel that I have no right to injure him by affixing to his early birth
an opprobrium of which he himself is guiltless. If ever I return to
England, you shall know all, and by your counsels I will abide. Love to
all your happy family. Your grateful FRIEND AND PUPIL. From this letter
I began to suspect that the poor boy was probably not born in wedlock,
and that Ardworth's silence arose from his compunction. I conceived it
best never to mention this suspicion to John himself as he grew up. Why
should I afflict him by a doubt from which his own father shrank,
and which might only exist in my own inexperienced and uncharitable
interpretation of some vague words? When John was fourteen, I received
from Messrs. Drummond a further sum of 500 pounds, but without any
line from Ardworth, and only to the effect that Messrs. Drummond were
directed by a correspondent in Calcutta to pay me the said sum on behalf
of expenses incurred for the maintenance of the child left to my charge
by John Walter Ardworth. My young pupil had been two years at the
University when I received the letter of which this is a copy:--

"How are you? Still well, still happy? Let me hope so! I have not
written to you, dear old friend, but I have not been forgetful of you;
I have inquired of you through my correspondents, and have learned, from
time to time, such accounts as satisfied my grateful affection for you.
I find that you have given the boy my name. Well, let him bear it,--it
is nothing to boast of such as it became in my person; but, mind, I do
not, therefore, acknowledge him as my son. I wish him to think himself
without parents, without other aid in the career of life than his own
industry and talent--if talent he has. Let him go through the healthful
probation of toil; let him search for and find independence. Till he is
of age, 150 pounds per annum will be paid quarterly to your account for
him at Messrs. Drummond's. If then, to set him up in any