"just a question: What has Aadam
got to do with my will?"

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," said the lawyer, staring.

"What has he got to do with it?" repeated the old man, smiting with his
fist upon the arm of his chair. "Is my money mine's, or is it Aadam's?
Can Aadam interfere?"

"O, I see," said Mr. Gregg. "Certainly not. On the marriage of both of
your children a certain sum was paid down and accepted in full of
legitim. You have surely not forgotten the circumstance, Mr. Loudon?"

"So that, if I like," concluded my grandfather, hammering out his words,
"I can leave every doit I die possessed of to the Great
Magunn?"--meaning probably the Great Mogul.

"No doubt of it," replied Gregg, with a shadow of a smile.

"Ye hear that, Aadam?" asked my grandfather.

"I may be allowed to say I had no need to hear it," said my uncle.

"Very well," says my grandfather. "You and Jeannie's yin can go for a
bit walk. Me and Gregg has business."

When once I was in the hall alone with Uncle Adam, I turned to him sick
at heart. "Uncle Adam," I said, "you can understand, better than I can
say, how very painful all this is to me."

"Yes, I am sorry you have seen your grandfather in so unamiable a
light," replied this extraordinary man. "You shouldn't allow it to
affect your mind, though. He has sterling qualities, quite an
extraordinary character; and I have no fear but he means to behave
handsomely to you."

His composure was beyond my imitation: the house could not contain me,
nor could I even promise to return to it: in concession to which
weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the
office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should
waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more
topsy-turvy situation; you would have thought it was I who had suffered
some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror who
scorned to take advantage.

It was plain enough that I was to be endowed: to what extent and upon
what conditions I was now left for an hour to meditate in the wide and
solitary thoroughfares of the new town, taking counsel with
street-corner statues of George IV. and William Pitt, improving my mind
with the pictures in the window of a music-shop, and renewing my
acquaintance with Edinburgh east wind. By the end of the hour I made my
way to Mr. Gregg's office, where I was placed, with a few appropriate
words, in possession of a chequ