The death of Mr. Herbert, apart altogether from the anguish of heart with which his sad and simple story affected all who knew him, was to me a great loss: happening so soon after my return, before there was time to fall into my wonted custom, it occasioned me a great deal of trouble. I could not, however, bring my mind to business while any thing remained to be done in his personal concerns; and had it not been for the kind conduct of Mr. Oliver Cockspur, who really acted as if he had been the son of the deceased, I would have found myself in no small measure of perplexity. For Mr. Herbert left several relations, and he had made a little money in the bank: after what I had advanced him was repaid, the adjustment, though a small affair, was most vexatious. However, Mr. Oliver took it off my hands, and managed it in the end to the satisfaction of all parties.

Another grievous tribulation arose from his loss as manager of the bank,—nowhere could his equal be found; and when I, at the request of Messrs. Haarlem and Breugle, stepped into his place until another could be got, the difficulty I felt myself in, on all points of the business, was unspeakable. Not that banking is a craft requiring a great stretch of understanding, for in that respect my store affairs were as the mysteries of Egypt, and needing the wisdom of the Chaldees’ excellence, as compared with it; but it demands a particularity of attention, which does not well accord with my nature;—in truth, it is a trade I never could highly venerate, having uniformly observed that bankers were a class of the commercial community more remarkable than any others for the narrowness of their knowledge, and the straitened circumstances of their intellectuals. However, there was I placed, by that mournful event, behind the bank counter, and so tethered to the spot that I had not a minute to spare for a crack with a neighbour, though his news were ever so interesting.“Well; he in time may cure to clear himself,

But at this instant he is sick, my Lord,

Of a strange fever.”

Passing by without further circumstantiality the matters of business, I ought, nevertheless, to notice that I narrowly escaped a tough lawsuit with the Albany Land Company, owing to the double dealing of John Waft, and it required some dexterity to get the matter amicably settled—in the end, however, settled it was; and by the time Mr. Hoskins was able to stir about again, the construction of the buildings for manufacturing the salt was actively undertaking. In the mean time the bailie had disappeared; he was never seen at Judiville from the day of our return from the lake; and it was reported, that in the expedition he had caught a severe cold, which made it doubtful if he would be able to weather the winter. It was on the day of Mr. Herbert's funeral that I first heard of his illness; but thinking it was only a cold by which he was affected, I paid no particular attention to the news.

When my tribulations began to subside, after the establishment of my brother in the bank, and I had leisure again to look about me, I missed the bodie, and heard with unfeigned concern that he was still far from being well. In fact, I never had thought there was much more the matter with him than shame for the way he had acted in the disposal of his discovery of the spring; and as the question respecting it between me and the company was adjusted, my wrath did not burn against him always, so that I would have been glad to have seen him on the old free terms of banter, give and take, in which we had so long lived.

But one day his wife, a shrewd old carlin as cunning as himself, came to our store, and after some loose talk about this and that, all to very little purpose, she began to wipe her eyes with the corner of her shawl, and to whine about the black prospect before her, and what would become of her if the gude man was taken away;