“DEAR SIR:  I am charged with the melancholy duty of announcing to you the death of your excellent grandfather, Mr. Alexander Loudon, on the 17th ult.  On Sunday the 13th, he went to church as usual in the forenoon, and stopped on his way home, at the corner of Princes Street, in one of our seasonable east winds, to talk with an old friend.  The same evening acute bronchitis declared itself; from the first, Dr. M’Combie anticipated a fatal result, and the old gentleman appeared to have no illusion as to his own state.  He repeatedly assured me it was ‘by’ with him now; ‘and high time, too,’ he once added with characteristic asperity.  He was not in the least changed on the approach of death:  only (what I am sure must be very grateful to your feelings) he seemed to think and speak even more kindly than usual of yourself:  referring to you as ‘Jeannie’s yin,’ with strong expressions of regard.  ‘He was the only one I ever liket of the hale jing-bang,’ was one of his expressions; and you will be glad to know that he dwelt particularly on the dutiful respect you had always displayed in your relations.  The small codicil, by which he bequeaths you his Molesworth and other professional works, was added (you will observe) on the day before his death; so that you were in his thoughts until the end.  I should say that, though rather a trying patient, he was most tenderly nursed by your uncle, and your cousin, Miss Euphemia.  I enclose a copy of the testament, by which you will see that you share equally with Mr. Adam, and that I hold at your disposal a sum nearly approaching seventeen thousand pounds.  I beg to congratulate you on this considerable acquisition, and expect your orders, to which I shall hasten to give my best attention.  Thinking that you might desire to return at once to this country, and not knowing how you may be placed, I enclose a credit for six hundred pounds.  Please sign the accompanying slip, and let me have it at your earliest convenience.

“I am, dear sir, yours truly,

“W.  RUTHERFORD GREGG.”

“God bless the old gentleman!” I thought; “and for that matter God bless Uncle Adam! and my cousin Euphemia! and Mr. Gregg!” I had a vision of that grey old life now brought to an end—­“and high time too”—­a vision of those Sabbath streets alternately vacant and filled with silent people; of the babel of the bells, the long-drawn psalmody, the shrewd sting of the east wind, the hollow, echoing, dreary house to which “Ecky” had returned with the hand of death already on his shoulder; a vision, too, of the long, rough country lad, perhaps a serious courtier of the lasses in the hawthorn den, perhaps a rustic dancer on the green, who had first earned and answered to that harsh diminutive.  And I asked myself if, on the whole, poor Ecky had succeeded in life; if the last state of that man were not on the whole worse than the first; and the house in Randolph Crescent a less admirable dwelling than the hamlet where he saw the day and grew to manhood.  Here was a consolatory thought for one who was himself a failure.