the
other room thought fit to make his testamentary dispositions, too, and
dictated, by his obedient brother and secretary, a grandiloquent letter
to his mother, of whom, and by that writing, he took a solemn farewell.
She would hardly, he supposed, pursue the scheme which she had in view
(a peculiar satirical emphasis was laid upon the scheme which she had
in view), after the event of that morning, should he fall, as, probably,
would be the case.

"My dear, dear George, don't say that!" cried the affrighted secretary.

"'As probably will be the case,'" George persisted with great majesty.
"You know what a good shot Colonel George is, Harry. I, myself, am
pretty fair at a mark, and 'tis probable that one or both of us will
drop.--'I scarcely suppose you will carry out the intentions you have
at present in view.'" This was uttered in a tone of still greater
bitterness than George had used even in the previous phrase. Harry wept
as he took it down.

"You see I say nothing; Madame Esmond's name does not even appear in the
quarrel. Do you not remember in our grandfather's life of himself, how
he says that Lord Castlewood fought Lord Mohun on a pretext of a quarrel
at cards? and never so much as hinted at the lady's name, who was the
real cause of the duel? I took my hint, I confess, from that, Harry.
Our mother is not compromised in the--Why, child, what have you been
writing, and who taught thee to spell?" Harry had written the last
words "in view," in vew, and a great blot of salt water from his honest,
boyish eyes may have obliterated some other bad spelling.

"I can't think about the spelling now, Georgy," whimpered George's
clerk. "I'm too miserable for that. I begin to think, perhaps it's all
nonsense, perhaps Colonel George never----"

"Never meant to take possession of Castlewood; never gave himself airs,
and patronised us there; never advised my mother to have me flogged,
never intended to marry her; never insulted me, and was insulted before
the king's officers; never wrote to his brother to say we should be the
better for his parental authority? The paper is there," cried the young
man, slapping his breast-pocket, "and if anything happens to me, Harry
Warrington, you will find it on my corse!"

"Write yourself, Georgy, I can't write," says Harry, digging his fists
into his eyes, and smearing over the whole composition, bad spelling and
all, with his elbows.

On this, George, taking another sheet of paper,