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.
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