t, for I was already absorbed in mine. But in
awhile she came and kissed me in her girlish, goodnatured way. Her eyes
used to fill with tears at sight of my paroxysms of grief. Then she would
begin, 'I remember it was a saying of his,' and so she would repeat
it--something maybe wise, maybe playful, at all events consolatory--and the
circumstances in which she had heard him say it, and then would follow the
recollections suggested by these; and so I was stolen away half by him, and
half by Cousin Monica, from my despair and lamentation.

Along with these lay a large envelope, inscribed with the words 'Directions
to be complied with immediately on my death.' One of which was, 'Let the
event be _forthwith_ published in the _county_ and principal _London_
papers.' This step had been already taken. We found no record of Dr.
Bryerly's address.

We made search everywhere, except in the cabinet, which I would on no
account permit to be opened except, according to his direction, by Dr.
Bryerly's hand. But nowhere was a will, or any document resembling one, to
be found. I had now, therefore, no doubt that his will was placed in the
cabinet.

In the search among my dear father's papers we found two sheafs of letters,
neatly tied up and labelled--these were from my uncle Silas.

My cousin Monica looked down upon these papers with a strange smile; was it
satire--was it that indescribable smile with which a mystery which covers a
long reach of years is sometimes approached?

These were odd letters. If here and there occurred passages that were
querulous and even abject, there were also long passages of manly and
altogether noble sentiment, and the strangest rodomontade and maunderings
about religion. Here and there a letter would gradually transform itself
into a prayer, and end with a doxology and no signature; and some of them
expressed such wild and disordered views respecting religion, as I imagine
he can never have disclosed to good Mr. Fairfield, and which approached
more nearly to the Swedenborg visions than to anything in the Church of
England.

I read these with a solemn interest, but my cousin Monica was not similarly
moved. She read them with the same smile--faint, serenely contemptuous,
I thought--with which she had first looked down upon them. It was the
countenance of a person who amusedly traces the working of a character that
is well understood.

'Uncle Silas is very religious?' I said, not quite liking Lady K