"After your father's death, I felt the most solitary of men for many months. Still I continued to do my duty as a private soldier, without taking any interest in surrounding events. About two years after my arrival, a revolt broke out in the colony: the Singaleese were aided by the Candians from the mountains; and the handful of Europeans could scarce make head against the multitudes of the natives, who had courage and ferocity more than sufficient to have exterminated us every man; but, fortunately for us, they had no discipline or other mode of warfare, but to rush on their enemy and overpower them. This they found to be a vain attempt; yet they never changed their mode until compelled to sue for peace, by the immense slaughter made of them in this war of carnage and massacre. I had been several times the decided cause of victory to the Dutch, in preventing small detachments from being cut off, and directing the movements of the main body; for which services I was promoted to a lieutenantcy. I never rose higher, nor do I believe I would have attained this rank, had it not been to enable me to take command of small parties, for which I was qualified from my being ever on the outskirts of the army, or in the borders of the jungle. Great numbers of my men died through fatigue and fever. I, myself for several years, remained robust; but my turn came at length. I fevered and relapsed; several times my life was despaired of for whole weeks; and many wounds I had received from the Candian spears and arrows broke out afresh, and baffled the power of medicine. My constitution triumphed over my malady; but I was unfit for service. I have one wound here on my side that is hurrying me to my grave; which, I hope, will be in Pennycuick churchyard. But, now that I have the happiness to find my long-lost charge, there is one more duty for me to perform when we reach Edinburgh, whither you must return with me, to consign me to the dust. That duty I never did expect to be called to perform--it is to re-possess myself of the certificates of your father's marriage and your baptism, which are, as I told you, concealed behind the wainscot in the house in Mary King's Close. I trust, for your sake, they are still safe, and may be the means of placing you in your proper rank in society." "Dear father," I replied--"for I must still call you so--if it is to be of any service to me alone, it is of no avail to proceed further on that errand, for fortune baffles all my undertakings, and I tell you you will not succeed; still I have no objection to return with you to Scotland, although my present object in London was to go to sea in a vessel bound for the Indian seas--the only place of all I ever visited where fortune smiled upon me, and I scorned her favours." After dinner I gave the lieutenant an outline of my adventures since he had left Edinburgh, at which he was much moved. When I told him of the obligation I lay under to the worthy lawyer--