George came again to see him the next day, and had again a long conference with him. The laird told him that he had fully¹ resolved to leave everything to his daughter, personal as well as real, on the one condition that she should marry her cousin; if she would not, then the contents of his closet, with his library, and certain articles specified², should pass to Crawford.

 

“And you must take care,” he said, “if my death should come suddenly, that anything valuable in this room be carried into the closet before it is sealed up.”

 

Shrinking as he did from the idea of death, the old man was yet able, in the interest of his possessions, to talk of it! It was as if he thought the sole consolation³ that, in the loss of their owner, his things could have, was the continuance of their intercourse⁴ with each other in the heaven of his Mammon-besotted imagination.

 

George responded heartily⁵, showing a gratitude⁶ more genuine than fine: every virtue⁷ partakes of the ground in which it is grown. He assured the laird that, valuable as was in itself his contingent⁸ gift, which no man could appreciate more than he, it would be far more valuable to him if it sealed his adoption⁹ as his son-in-law. He would rather owe the possession of the wonderful collection to the daughter than to the father! In either case the precious property would be held as for him, each thing as carefully tended as by the laird's own eye and hand!

 

Whether it would at the moment have comforted the dying man to be assured, as George might have him, that there would be nothing left of him to grieve at the loss of his idols—nothing left of him but a memory, to last so long as George and Alexa and one or two more should remain unburied, I can not tell. It was in any case a

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