Well, a blessing often comes at the eleventh hour!" As my ancestor now manifested a desire not to be disturbed, I called the nurse and quitted the room, retiring to my own modest chamber, where the packet, a large bundle of papers sealed and directed to myself in the handwriting of the dying man, was carefully secured under a good lock.

I did not meet my father again but once under circumstances which admitted of intelligible communion.

From the time of our first interview he gradually grew worse, his reason tottered, and, like the sinful cardinal of Shakespeare, "he died and gave no sign." Three days after my arrival, however, I was left alone with him, and he suddenly revived from a state approaching to stupor.

It was the only time since the first interview in which he had seemed even to know me.
"Thou art come at last!" he said, in a tone that was already sepulchral.
"Canst tell me, boy, why they had golden rods to measure the city ?" His nurse had been reading to him a chapter of the Revelations which had been selected by himself.

"Thou seest, lad, the wall itself was of jasper and the city was of pure gold--I shall not need money in my new habitation--ha! it will not be wanted there!--I am not crazed, Jack--would I had loved gold less and my kind more.