ues
and comely features, though certainly not the same hilarious expression,
which Lester had attributed to him, sat in a large chair, close by the
centre window, which was open. He rose and shook Walter by the hand with
great cordiality.

"Sir, I am delighted to see you! How is your worthy uncle? I only wish
he were with you--you dine with me of course. Thomas, tell the cook to
add a tongue and chicken to the roast beef--no,--young gentleman, I will
have no excuse; sit down, sit down; pray come near the window; do you
not find it dreadfully close? not a breath of air? This house is so
choked up; don't you find it so, eh? Ah, I see, you can scarcely gasp."

"My dear Sir, you are mistaken; I am rather cold, on the contrary: nor
did I ever in my life see a more airy house than yours."

"I try to make it so, Sir, but I can't succeed; if you had seen what
it was, when I first bought it! a garden here, Sir; a copse there; a
wilderness, God wot! at the back: and a row of chesnut trees in the
front! You may conceive the consequence, Sir; I had not been long here,
not two years, before my health was gone, Sir, gone--the d--d vegetable
life sucked it out of me. The trees kept away all the air--I was nearly
suffocated, without, at first, guessing the cause. But at length, though
not till I had been withering away for five years, I discovered the
origin of my malady. I went to work, Sir; I plucked up the cursed
garden, I cut down the infernal chesnuts, I made a bowling green of
the diabolical wilderness, but I fear it is too late. I am dying by
inches,--have been dying ever since. The malaria has effectually tainted
my constitution."

Here Mr. Courtland heaved a deep sigh, and shook his head with a most
gloomy expression of countenance.

"Indeed, Sir," said Walter, "I should not, to look at you, imagine that
you suffered under any complaint. You seem still the same picture of
health, that my uncle describes you to have been when you knew him so
many years ago."

"Yes, Sir, yes; the confounded malaria fixed the colour to my cheeks;
the blood is stagnant, Sir. Would to God I could see myself a shade
paler!--the blood does not flow; I am like a pool in a citizen's garden,
with a willow at each corner;--but a truce to my complaints. You see,
Sir, I am no hypochondriac, as my fool of a doctor wants to persuade me:
a hypochondriac shudders at every breath of air, trembles when a door
is open, and looks upon a window as the entran