fortune, and we hardly knew what to do with it. I may say that it made us
more unhappy, for we thought that we had nobody to leave it to; and he who
ought to have inherited it, and whom it would have made independent, we
knew not whether he was in the land of the living, or a strange corpse in a
foreign grave. Yet I resolved that, for his sake, I would not spend one
farthing of it, but let it lie at interest; and I even provided in a will
which I made, that unless he cast up, and claimed it, no one should derive
any benefit from either principal or interest until fifty years after my
death.

I have said, that the health of Agnes had broken down beneath her weight of
sadness, and as she had a relation, who was a gentleman of much
respectability, that then resided in the neighbourhood of Kelso, it was
agreed that we should spend a few weeks in the summer at his house. I
entertained the hope that society, and the beautiful scenery around Kelso,
with the white chalky braes[A] overhung with trees, and the bonny islands
in the Tweed, with mansions, palaces, and ruins, all embosomed in a
paradise as fair and fertile as ever land could boast of, would have a
tendency to cheer her spirits, and ease, if not remove, the one heavy and
continuing sorrow, which lay like an everlasting nightmare upon her heart,
weighing her to the grave.

Her relation was a well-educated man, and he had been an officer in the
army in his youth, and had seen foreign parts. He was also quite
independent in his worldly circumstances, and as hospitable as he was
independent. There were at that period a number of French officers,
prisoners, at Kelso, and several of them, who were upon their parole, were
visiters at the house of my wife's relation.

There was one amongst them, a fine, though stern-looking man of middle age,
and who was addressed by the appellation of Count Berthe. He spoke our
language almost as well as if he had been a native. He appeared to be
interested when he heard that my name was Goldie, and one day after dinner,
when the cloth was withdrawn, and my wife's relation had ordered the punch
upon the table--"Ha! Goldie! Goldie!" said the Count, repeating my name--"I
can tell one story--which concerns me much--concerning, one Monsieur
Goldie. When I was governor of the castle La----, (he called it by some
foreign name, which I cannot repeat to you), there was brought to me, (he
added), to be placed under my charge, a young British officer