"Did he make no difficulty about sending it to you?" asked Miss Agnes. "No, he seemed to give it readily; Mr. Reed sent it to us a day or two since." Miss Wyllys received the letter from her father, inviting Elinor to read it over her shoulder, at the same moment. It was endorsed, in Clapp's hand, "STATEMENT OF MR. STANLEY, PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF HIS FATHER'S EXECUTOR," and ran as follows: "July 1st, 183-. "I left home, as everybody knows, because I would have my own way in everything. It was against my best interests to be sure, but boys don't think at such times, about anything but having their own will. I suppose that every person connected with my deceased father knows, that my first voyage was made to Russia, in the year 18--, in the ship Dorothy Beck, Jonas Thomson, Master. I was only fourteen years old at the time. My father had taken to heart my going off, and when I came back from Russia he was on the look-out, wrote to me and sent me money, and as soon as he heard we were in port he came after me. Well, I went back with the old gentleman; but we had a quarrel on the road, and I put about again and went to New Bedford, where I shipped in a whaler. We were out only eighteen months, and brought in a full cargo. This time I went home of my own accord, and I staid a great part of one summer. I did think some of quitting the seas; but after a while things didn't work well, and one of my old shipmates coming up into the country to see me, I went off with him. This time I shipped in the Thomas Jefferson, for China. This was in the year 1814, during the last war, when I was about eighteen. Most people, who know anything about William Stanley, think that was the last of him, that he never set foot on American ground again; but they are mistaken, as he himself will take the pains to show. So far I have told nothing but what everybody knows, but now I am going to give a short account of what has happened, since my friends heard from me. Well; the Jefferson sailed, on her voyage to China, in October; she was wrecked on the coast of Africa in December, and it was reported that all hands were lost: so they were, all but one, and that one was William Stanley. I was picked up by a Dutchman, the barque William, bound to Batavia. I kept with the Dutchman for a while, until he went back to Holland. After I had cut adrift from him, I fell in with some Americans, and got some old papers; in one of them I saw my father's second marriage. I knew the name of the lady he had married, but I had never spoken to her. The very next day, one of the men I was with, who came from the same part of the country, told me of my father's death, and said it was the common talk about the neighbourhood, that I was disinherited. This made me very angry; though I wasn't much surprised, after what had passed. I was looking out for a homeward-bound American, to go back, and see how matters stood, when one night that I was drunk, I was carried