his money, but that it was not so easy to be raised as he imagined. Hamilton had, indeed, made repeated applications from abroad, to have the sum in question remitted to a banker in London, to be vested in the funds. But the laird as often eluded the requisition.--Though really attached to his brother, yet he did not forget that, like the brother of every body else, he was mortal, and probably the sooner for his profession; and thought that, to use his own phrase, “a bird in hand was worth two in the bush; and the money, to which he was eventually heir, was as well in his own custody.” The laird, with a very moderate understanding, and mild milkiness of disposition, had a heart less contracted by interested selfishness, than debarred from benevolent exertion, by feeble timidity, or misguided by family vanity. His heiress-hunting adventures did not arise so much from grasping avarice, as from a desire of aggrandizing the house of Etterick. His pecuniary anxieties resulted less from the desire of accumulation, the means of gratifying which he had fully in his power, than the fear of incurring difficulties, for which there were, in his situation, no probable grounds. Hamilton had written him on his arrival in England, that he desired to have the disposal of his own money; the laird having lately bought a property contiguous to his estate, saw that he could not discharge his brother’s claim without borrowing, and conceived himself about to be embarrassed, although his estate was two thousand a year, without any other incumbrance. He had complained to their mutual friends, of the loss that would accrue to him, if the major insisted on payment. Those friends, knowing the little foundation for the laird’s apprehensions, urged his brother to have the affair settled as speedily as possible, by coming to the spot himself. The proprietor of Etterick, during the first days of Hamilton’s visit, repeatedly endeavoured to dissuade him from his intended marriage, and from taking his money into his own management; but found himself entirely disappointed in both. At last, a neighbouring gentleman advanced the sum upon the laird’s personal bond, and Hamilton soon after returned to the south. He had meanwhile arranged, by letters, the investment of his property, and the prolongation of his leave of absence, so that the six following months he could, without interruption, devote to love and his Eliza. CHAPTER III.