a Bramah lock."

"I noticed that it had, and that it was locked."

"What have you done with it?"

"Valentine said you wished me to take particular care of it, so I locked
it into my cabinet, where my will is, as you know, and where are most of
my papers."

"Thank you; here is the key. You think you shall never forget where that
desk is, Giles?"

"Never! such a thing is quite impossible."

"If I am gone when you return, you are to open that desk. You will find
in it a letter which I wrote about three years ago; and if I have ever
deserved well of you and yours, I charge you and I implore you to do
your very best as regards what I have asked of you in that letter."

CHAPTER IX.

SIGNED "DANIEL MORTIMER."--CANADA.

"The log's burn red; she lifts her head
For sledge-bells tinkle and tinkle, O lightly swung.
'Youth was a pleasant morning, but ah! to think 'tis fled,
Sae lang, lang syne,' quo' her mother, 'I, too, was young.'

"No guides there are but the North star,
And the moaning forest tossing wild arms before,
The maiden murmurs, 'O sweet were yon bells afar,
And hark! hark! hark! for he cometh, he nears the door.'

"Swift north-lights show, and scatter and go.
How can I meet him, and smile not, on this cold shore?
Nay, I will call him, 'Come in from the night and the snow,
And love, love, love in the wild wood, wander no more.'"

An hour after the conversation between Brandon and old Daniel Mortimer,
they parted, and nothing could be more unlike than his travels were and
those of the Melcombes. First, there was Newfoundland to be seen. It
looked at a distance like a lump of perfectly black hill embedded in
thick layers of cotton wool; then as the vessel approached, there was
its harbour, which though the year was nearly half over, was crackling
all over with brittle ice. Then there was Halifax Bay, blue as a great
sapphire, full of light, and swarming with the spawn of fish. And there
was the Bras d'Or, boats all along this yellow spit of sand, stranded,
with their sails set and scarcely flapping in the warm still air; and
then there was the port where he was to meet his emigrants, for they had
not crossed in the same ship with him; and after that there were wild
forests and unquiet waters far inland, where all night the noise of the
"lumber" was heard as it leaped over the falls; while at dawn was added
the screaming o