There was a pause here, and the next paragraph was dated two days after.

“If I have strength to come, I shall return by the next steamer; but the fact is, my dear Gilbert, I am very ill—­have been completely prostrate since writing the above—­and a doctor here tells me I must not think of the voyage yet awhile.  But I shan’t allow his opinion to govern me.  If I can crawl to the steamer, which starts three days hence, I shall come.”

Then there was another break, and again the writer went on in a weak and more straggling hand, without any date this time.

“My dear Gil, it’s nearly a week since I wrote the last lines, and I’ve been in bed ever since.  I’m afraid there’s no hope for me; in plain words, I believe I’m dying.  To you I leave the duty I am not allowed to perform.  Marian is living, and in England.  I believe that scoundrelly father of hers told me the truth when he declared that.  You will not rest till you find her, I know; and you will protect her fortune from that wretch.  God bless you, faithful old friend!  Heaven knows how I yearn for the sight of your honest face, lying here among strangers, to be buried in a foreign land.  See that my wife pays Mrs. Branston the money I borrowed to come here; and tell her that I was grateful to her, and thought of her on my dying bed.  To my wife I send no message.  She knows that I loved her; but how dear she has been to me in this bitter time of separation, she can never know.

“You will find a bulky MS. at my chambers, in the bottom drawer on the right side of my desk.  It is my Life of Swift—­unfinished as my own life.  If, after reading it, you should think it worth publishing, as a fragment, with my name to it, I should wish you to arrange its publication.  I should be glad to leave my name upon something.”

In a stranger’s hand, and upon another sheet of paper, Gilbert read the end of his friend’s history.

“Sir,—­I regret to inform you that your friend Mr. Saltram expired at eleven o’clock last night (Wednesday, May 2nd), after an illness of a fortnight’s duration, throughout which I gave him my best attention as his medical adviser.  He will be buried in the Cypress-hill Cemetery, on Long Island, at his own request; and he has left sufficient funds for the necessary expenses, and the payment of his hotel bill, as well as my own small claim against him.  Any surplus which may be left I shall forward to you, when these payments have been made.  I enclose a detailed account of the case for your satisfaction, and have the honour to be, sir,

    “Yours very obediently,

    “SILAS WARREN, M.D.

    “113 Sixteenth-street, New York,

    “May 3, 186—.”

This was all.

And Gilbert had to carry these tidings to Marian.  For a time he was almost paralyzed by the blow.  He had loved this man as a brother; if he had ever doubted the strength of his attachment to John Saltram, he knew it now.  But the worst of all was, that one bitter fact—­Marian must be told, and by him.