‘But where is it to be procured?’ demanded Hindes. ‘I thought the sale of opium was prohibited in England.’ ‘So are the sale of several other articles that are in general use,’ said Colonel Brinsley, laughing, ‘but where’s a will, there’s a way, you know, Hindes.’ And thereupon he gave him all the necessary information for purchasing the deadly narcotic and using it as an anæsthetic, and took his leave, fully persuaded that he had done his friend Hindes an inestimable benefit. CHAPTER V. Mr Crampton’s prognostications, with regard to himself, proved to be but too true. He had intended to take his wife and sister-in-law to a lovely place called Fochabers, in the Highlands of Scotland, but, on the way thither, he was taken so ill, that it was thought advisable they should stop at Aberdeen for the sake of medical advice, within a month of which time the old man had an apoplectic fit, and died without recovering consciousness. The news of this disaster was a fresh blow to Henry Hindes, but the intimation of it was accompanied by such an earnest appeal from the widow that he would go to them and help them in this calamity, as he had done in the last, that he was obliged to pack his portmanteau at once and start for Aberdeen, to go through the same painful scenes he had done before. Mr Crampton’s last wish was that he should be carried back to Hampstead and laid by Jenny’s side. So the same melancholy preparations had to be made, the same melancholy coming-home to be gone through, and the same melancholy funeral rites to be solemnised, till Mr Hindes almost thought the former misery must have been a dream, and that Jenny Walcheren was only now being laid in her untimely grave. No wonder that he looked ill and distracted, people said. The high estimation in which he had been held by the dead man was proved by the fact that he had left him half his fortune. No! not to him, perhaps, but to his son, which amounted to the same thing. For what Henry Hindes had dreaded and tried to prevent had indeed come to pass. His late partner’s will left half his fortune, which was to remain in the business, to Walter James Henry Hindes, the son of his best friend, Henry Hindes; the other half to be his wife’s for her lifetime, and, after her death, her sister’s, on the same terms; and, when both were deceased, it was to be divided between the child or children of his best friend aforesaid, Henry Hindes. So he was forced to take it; to benefit by Jenny’s death; to see his offspring in the enjoyment of that wealth which her father had accumulated for her; and which, but for himself, she might have lived half a century to take advantage of.