make me the prey to impostors; and in all probability
he has either left the country, or adopted some mode of living which
would prevent his daring to disclose himself!" This thought plunged the
soliloquist into a gloomy abstraction, which lasted several minutes, and
from which he started, muttering aloud,--

"Yes, yes! I dare to believe, to hope it. Now for the minister and the
peerage!" And from that time the root of Sir William Brandon's ambition
spread with a firmer and more extended grasp over his mind.

We grieve very much that the course of our story should now oblige us to
record an event which we would willingly have spared ourselves the pain
of narrating. The good old Squire of Warlock Manor-house had scarcely
reached his home on his return from Bath, before William Brandon
received the following letter from his brother's gray-headed butler:--

HONNURED SUR,--I send this with all speede, thof with a hevy bart,
to axquainte you with the sudden (and it is feered by his loving
friends and well-wishers, which latter, to be sur, is all as knows
him) dangeros ilness of the Squire. He was seezed, poor deer
gentleman (for God never made a better, no offence to your Honnur),
the moment he set footing in his Own Hall, and what has hung rond me
like a millston ever sin, is that instead of his saying, "How do you
do, Sampson?" as was his wont, whenever he returned from forren
parts, sich as Bath, Lunnun, and the like, he said, "God bless you,
Sampson!" which makes me think sumhow that it will be his last
wurds; for he has never spoke sin, for all Miss Lucy be by his
bedside continual. She, poor deer, don't take on at all, in regard
of crying and such woman's wurk, but looks nevertheless, for all the
wurld, just like a copse. I sends Tom the postilion with this
hexpress, nowing he is a good hand at a gallop, having, not sixteen
years ago, beat some o' the best on 'un at a raceng. Hoping as yer
Honnur will lose no time in coming to this "house of mourning," I
remane, with all respect,
Your Honnur's humble servant to command,
JOHN SAMPSON.

[The reader, who has doubtless noticed how invariably servants of
long standing acquire a certain tone from that of their master, may
observe that honest John Sampson had caught from the squire the