calculate, but against the chances of which this
will and this letter provide. I am about to re-visit
England, in defiance of a warning that I shall be
there subjected to some peril which I refuse to
have defined, because I am unwilling that any
mean apprehension of personal danger should
enfeeble my nerves in the discharge of a stern and
solemn duty. If I overcome that peril, you will
not be my heir; my testament will be remodelled;
this letter will be recalled and destroyed. I shall
form ties which promise me the happiness I have
never hitherto found, though it is common to all
men—the affections of home, the caresses of
children, among whom I may find one to whom
hereafter I may bequeath, in my knowledge, a
far nobler heritage than my lands. In that case,
however, my first care would be to assure your
own fortunes. And the sum which this codicil
assures to my betrothed, would be transferred
to yourself on my wedding-day. Do you know
why, never having seen you, I thus select you
for preference to all my other kindred? Why
my heart, in writing thus, warms to your image?
Richard Strahan, your only sister, many years
older than yourself—you were then a child—
was the object of my first love. We were to
have been wedded, for her parents deceived me
into the belief that she returned my affection.
With a rare and noble candour, she herself
informed me, that her heart was given to another,
who possessed not my worldly gifts of wealth and
station. In resigning my claims to her hand, I
succeeded in propitiating her parents to her own
choice. I obtained for her husband the living
which he held, and I settled on your sister the
dower which at her death passed to you as the
brother to whom she had shown a mother's love,
and the interest of which has secured you a
modest independence.

"If these lines ever reach you, recognise
my title to reverential obedience to commands
which may seem to you wild, perhaps irrational;
and repay, as if a debt due from your own lost
sister, the affection I have borne to you for her
sake."

While I read this long and strange letter,
Strahan sat by my side, covering his face with his
hands and weeping with honest tears for the man
whose death had made him powerful and rich.

"You will undertake the trust ordained to me
in this letter," said he, struggling to compose
himself. "You will read and edit this memoir;
you are the very man he himself would have
selected. Of your honour and humanity there
can be no doubt, and you have studied with
success the sciences which he specifies as requisite
for the discharge of the task he commands."

At this request, though I could not be wholly
unprepared for it, my first impulse was that of a
vague terror. It seemed to me as if I were
becoming more and more entangled in a mysterious
and fatal web. But this impulse soon faded in
the eager yearnings of an ardent and irresistible
curiosity.

I promised to read the manuscript, and in order
that I might fully imbue my mind with the
object and wish of the deceased, I asked leave to
make a copy of the letter I had just read. To
this Strahan readily assented, and that copy I
have transcribed in the preceding pages.

I asked Strahan if he had yet found the
manuscript; he said, "No, he had not yet had the heart
to inspect the papers left by the deceased. He
would now do so. He should go in a day or two
to Derval Court, and reside there till the
murderer was discovered, as, doubtless, he soon must
be through the vigilance of the police. Not till
that discovery was made should Sir Philip's
remains, though already placed in their coffin, be
consigned to the family vault."

Strahan seemed to have some superstitious
notion that the murderer might be more secure
from justice if his victim were thrust, unavenged,
into the tomb.

LONDON WATER.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS. CHAPTER III.

THE New River project in 1607 was, without
doubt, a most hazardous speculation; a scheme
largely forced upon the town in advance of the
fair commercial demand, by a man of great self-
reliance, plausibility, and energy. It was a
scheme which the London corporation of the
time—a body not at all wanting in public spirit
then—refused to carry out, although they had
obtained several acts of parliament to enable them,
if they thought proper, to bring water into the
City from Hertfordshire. Although the enterprise
eventually succeeded, and grew gradually,
century after century, into one of the most
lucrative of joint-stock undertakings, its
commercial character from 1608 up to 1633 is
shown to be faulty, from the fact that it paid no
dividend for twenty years. The ground it gained
afterwards, up to and after the abolition of the
conduits in 1728, has been a source of wealth
and comfort to the shareholders; but the breakdown
of Master Hugh Myddelton's golden
calculations is hardly concealed by this after success.
He was opposed before he undertook the work;
he was opposed during its progress; and he was
doubtless taunted for years about his unsatisfactory
balance-sheets. He retained a sufficient
interest in the concern during its financial
struggles to make him comparatively wealthy
when the turn in affairs arrived—most probably
because no one would come forward to purchase
his shares. With singular inconsistency, his
memory is cherished by many as that of a great
public benefactor, while the existing water
companies in general, and his legal representatives
in particular, are daily and hourly abused. There
is nothing in the dim fragments of his history to
prove that he was particularly disinterested in
his dealings, or that, beyond painting his enterprise
in colours a little too glaring, he carried on
his business upon sentimental principles. If Sir
Hugh Myddelton, Bart., were really regarded by
his contemporaries as it is the fashion to regard
him now, it is strange that no one ever stepped