as good a breakfast as if he had been favoured with the ambrosial accompaniment which he had so hopefully promised himself. Nor was this a small matter, for the meal served as ballast to enable him to encounter something very different from the slight adverse wind he had experienced for the last hour. He was still sitting at the table, rather pleased that he had triumphed over morbid fears, and laying out his scheme for the day, when the words, coming from behind, “A letter, sir,” struck his ear as if by a slap. His hand nervously seized the proffered gift, his eyes “flew” as it were to meet the superscription. He did not know the handwriting. It was directed to the care of Messrs Robert Fleming & Co., one of the houses with which he had been doing business. So far he was relieved, even when disappointed by the absence of his wife’s hand on the address. He turned it with the view to break it open, and then stopped and trembled as his eye fixed itself on a large black seal, exhibiting the death’s head and cross-bones of a funeral letter. Even this he soon got over, under the supposition that it was an invitation to some acquaintance’s funeral sent through to him, likely, by the recommendation of his wife before she had received his true address. At length he broke it open, and read the following words:-- “DEAR SIR,--I am sorry to be under the necessity of informing you that your wife died this afternoon, between three and four, from the bursting of a blood-vessel in the lungs. You will see the propriety of starting for home as soon as you receive this melancholy intelligence.--Yours, “A. MORGAN, F.R.C.S.”