Two mails followed each other, and brought nothing.

By the third I received a long and almost incoherent letter of remorse, encouragement, consolation, and despair.

From this pitiful document, which (with a movement of piety) I burned as soon as I had read it, I gathered that the bubble of my father's wealth was burst, that he was now both penniless and sick; and that I, so far from expecting ten thousand dollars to throw away in juvenile extravagance, must look no longer for the quarterly remittances on which I lived.

My case was hard enough; but I had sense enough to perceive, and decency enough to do my duty.

I sold my curiosities, or rather I sent Pinkerton to sell them; and he had previously bought and now disposed of them so wisely that the loss was trifling.