gh when my London uncle, who was a bachelor, offered
to take charge of me, and bring me up to be his successor in business.

In this way I came to live in London, in my uncle's house, not far from
Gray's Inn, and to be treated and esteemed as his son, and to labour
with him in his office. I was very fond of the old gentleman. He was
the confidential agent of many country squires, and had attained to his
present position as much by knowledge of human nature as by knowledge
of law; though he was learned enough in the latter. He used to say his
business was law, his pleasure heraldry. From his intimate acquaintance
with family history, and all the tragic courses of life therein
involved, to hear him talk, at leisure times, about any coat of arms
that came across his path was as good as a play or a romance. Many
cases of disputed property, dependent on a love of genealogy, were
brought to him, as to a great authority on such points. If the lawyer
who came to consult him was young, he would take no fee, only give him
a long lecture on the importance of attending to heraldry; if the
lawyer was of mature age and good standing, he would mulct him pretty
well, and abuse him to me afterwards as negligent of one great branch
of the profession. His house was in a stately new street called Ormond
Street, and in it he had a handsome library; but all the books treated
of things that were past; none of them planned or looked forward into
the future. I worked away--partly for the sake of my family at home,
partly because my uncle had really taught me to enjoy the kind of
practice in which he himself took such delight. I suspect I worked too
hard; at any rate, in seventeen hundred and eighteen I was far from
well, and my good uncle was disturbed by my ill looks.

One day, he rang the bell twice into the clerk's room at the dingy
office in Gray's Inn Lane. It was the summons for me, and I went into
his private room just as a gentleman--whom I knew well enough by sight
as an Irish lawyer of more reputation than he deserved--was leaving.

My uncle was slowly rubbing his hands together and considering. I was
there two or three minutes before he spoke. Then he told me that I must
pack up my portmanteau that very afternoon, and start that night by
post-horse for West Chester. I should get there, if all went well, at
the end of five days' time, and must then wait for a packet to cross
over to Dublin; from thence I must proceed to a certain tow