l first place if they would but resolutely claim
the last as the special badge of their master!

What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things
peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the
instincts of beasts. But surely all will be well with us. If not, then
He who made us is evil, which is not to be thought. Surely, then, all
must go very well with us!

I feel ashamed when I read this over. My mind fills in all the trains
of thought of which you have the rude ends peeping out from this tangle.
Make what you can of it, dear Bertie, and believe that it all comes from
my innermost heart. Above all may I be kept from becoming a partisan,
and tempering with truth in order to sustain a case. Let me but get a
hand on her skirt, and she may drag me where she will, if she will but
turn her face from time to time that I may know her.

You'll see from the address of this letter, Bertie, that I have left
Scotland and am in Yorkshire. I have been here three months, and am now
on the eve of leaving under the strangest circumstances and with the
queerest prospects. Good old Cullingworth has turned out a trump, as I
always knew he would. But, as usual, I am beginning at the wrong end, so
here goes to give you an idea of what has been happening.

I told you in my last about my lunacy adventure and my ignominious
return from Lochtully Castle. When I had settled for the flannel vests
which my mother had ordered so lavishly I had only five pounds left out
of my pay. With this, as it was the first money that I had ever earned
im{sic} my life, I bought her a gold bangle, so behold me reduced at
once to my usual empty pocketed condition. Well, it was something just
to feel that I HAD earned money. It gave me an assurance that I might
again.

I had not been at home more than a few days when my father called me
into the study after breakfast one morning and spoke very seriously as
to our financial position. He began the interview by unbuttoning his
waistcoat and asking me to listen at his fifth intercostal space, two
inches from the left sternal line. I did so, and was shocked to hear a
well-marked mitral regurgitant murmur.

"It is of old standing," said he, "but of late I have had a puffiness
about the ankles and some renal symptoms which show me that it is
beginning to tell."

I tried to express my grief and sympathy, but he cut me short with some
asperity.

"The point is," said he, "that