ppointed in his expected legacy, and dreading the attacks of his
creditors, or unwilling to throw himself once more on the generosity
of his brother, had again suddenly quitted England and entered on
some enterprise or occupation abroad. It was also possible, to one
so reckless and changeful, that even, after receiving the legacy, a
proposition from some wild comrade might have hurried him away on any
continental project on the mere impulse of the moment, for the impulse
of the moment had always been the guide of his life; and once abroad he
might have returned to India, and in new connections forgotten the
old ties at home. Letters from abroad too, miscarry; and it was
not improbable that the wanderer might have written repeatedly,
and receiving no answer to his communications, imagined that the
dissoluteness of his life had deprived him of the affections of
his family, and, deserving so well to have the proffer of renewed
intercourse rejected, believed that it actually was so. These, and
a hundred similar conjectures, found favour in the eyes of the young
traveller; but the chances of a fatal accident, or sudden death,
he pertinaciously refused at present to include in the number of
probabilities. Had his father been seized with a mortal illness on the
road, was it not likely that he would, in the remorse occasioned in
the hardiest by approaching death, have written to his brother, and
recommending his child to his care, have apprised him of the addition
to his fortune? Walter then did not meditate embarrassing his present
journey by those researches among the dead, which the worthy Courtland
had so considerately recommended to his prudence: should his expedition,
contrary to his hopes, prove wholly unsuccessful, it might then be well
to retrace his steps and adopt the suggestion. But what man, at the
age of twenty-one, ever took much precaution on the darker side of a
question on which his heart was interested?

With what pleasure, escaping from conjecture to a more ultimate
conclusion--did he, in recalling those words, in which his father had
more than hinted to Courtland of his future amendment, contemplate
recovering a parent made wise by years and sober by misfortunes, and
restoring him to a hearth of tranquil virtues and peaceful enjoyments!
He imaged to himself a scene of that domestic happiness, which is so
perfect in our dreams, because in our dreams monotony is always
excluded from the picture. And, in this