rded, amounting to L10,800 principal money, and paying six
hundred and thirty-six pounds a-year. So that in the whole there was two
thousand and fifty-six pounds a year ready money constantly coming in.

When I had shown him all these, I laid them upon the table, and bade him
take them, that he might be able to give me an answer to the second
question. What fortune he had with his wife? And laughed a little at it.

He looked at them awhile, and then handed them all back again to me: "I
will not touch them," says he, "nor one of them, till they are all
settled in trustees' hands for your own use, and the management wholly
your own."

I cannot omit what happened to me while all this was acting; though it
was cheerful work in the main, yet I trembled every joint of me, worse
for aught I know than ever Belshazzar did at the handwriting on the
wall, and the occasion was every way as just. "Unhappy wretch," said I
to myself, "shall my ill-got wealth, the product of prosperous lust, and
of a vile and vicious life of whoredom and adultery, be intermingled
with the honest well-gotten estate of this innocent gentleman, to be a
moth and a caterpillar among it, and bring the judgments of heaven upon
him, and upon what he has, for my sake? Shall my wickedness blast his
comforts? Shall I be fire in his flax? and be a means to provoke heaven
to curse his blessings? God forbid! I'll keep them asunder if it be
possible."

This is the true reason why I have been so particular in the account of
my vast acquired stock; and how his estate, which was perhaps the
product of many years' fortunate industry, and which was equal if not
superior to mine at best, was, at my request, kept apart from mine, as
is mentioned above.

I have told you how he gave back all my writings into my own hands
again. "Well," says I, "seeing you will have it be kept apart, it shall
be so, upon one condition, which I have to propose, and no other." "And
what is the condition?" says he. "Why," says I, "all the pretence I can
have for the making over my own estate to me is, that in case of your
mortality, I may have it reserved for me, if I outlive you." "Well,"
says he, "that is true" "But then," said I, "the annual income is always
received by the husband, during his life, as 'tis supposed, for the
mutual subsistence of the family; now," says I, "here is L2000 a year,
which I believe is as much as we shall spend, and I desire none of it
may be saved; and all the