ur, in the progress of this tale, must be
counted for no fault of mine; especially as I am not about to introduce
another death-bed. One need not have the mummy always at our feasts.
Surely, too, these deaths have ever been on fit occasion: one broken
heart; one bereaved, yet comforted; and one which perished in its sin of
uttermost hard-heartedness. And here, if any insurance clerk, or other
interested person, will show cause why Mrs. Jane Mackenzie should not
die at the age of ninety-two, I would keep her alive if I could; but the
fact is, I cannot: she died. Henry Clements never saw her, any more that
I, nor dear Maria. But that was no earthly reason wherefore--

_First_, Maria should not bewail the dear old relative's loss with all
her heart and eyes, and children and household in mourning.

Nor, _secondly_, wherefore Mrs. Jane Mackenzie, aforesaid, of
Ballyriggan, province of Ulster, should not leave her estate of
Ballyriggan, aforesaid, and a vast heap of other property, to the only
surviving though distant scion of her family, Henry Clements.

Nor, _thirdly_, wherefore I should not record the fact, as duly bound in
my capacity of honest historian.

This accession of property was large, almost overwhelming, when added to
Maria's patrimony of three thousand a-year, the produce of St. Benet's
Sherehog: for besides and beyond a considerable breadth of Irish acres,
sundry houses in Belfast, and an accumulation of half-forgotten funds,
the Bank of England found itself necessitated (from particular
circumstances of ill-caution in its servants) to refund the whole of
that twelve thousand forty-three pounds bank annuities, which Jack
Dillaway and his ladies had already made away with.

Rich, however, as Clements had become, he felt himself only as a great
lord's steward to help a needy world; and I never heard that he spent a
sixpence more upon himself, his equipage, or his family, from being some
thousands a-year richer: though I certainly did hear that, owing to this
legacy, every tenant upon Ballyriggan, and a vast number of struggling
families in Spitalfields and round about St. Benet's, had ample cause
to bless Heaven and the good man of Finsbury square. As for dear Maria,
it rejoiced her generous heart to find that Henry (whose gentlemanly
pride had all along been reproaching him for pauperism) was now become
pretty well her equal in wealth; even as her humility long had known him
her superior in mind, good look