"If among the friends of him who had so strangely disappeared, his intended bride felt the most acutely, it was on his brother that the blow fell most heavily. Mary long refused to be comforted; and was only sustained by young health, and by hopes which we all laboured to infuse into her dejected heart; but the sickly frame of William's brother never recovered from the shook it received. He always reflected on himself for having parted from his brother in anger; the fate of Edward, which was ever before his eyes, seemed to afford too natural an explanation of the mystery of William's disappearance; and his exhausted frame yielded at last to death, after an interval of about three years, during which his chief solace was the society and the kind attentions of the amiable family of Sanditofts. His last words were-- "'Whither is he gone?--what accident Hath rapt him from us?' "The title of his wicked cousin was contested by another claimant, which kept matters in abeyance, else he never could have been prevented by us, the executors, from entering into possession. At last, after a long litigation, the case went in his favour, of which I was first informed while engaged in the market here; and, although I had long anticipated such a result, the impression which the intelligence made upon my mind was most painful. At the weekly dinner, whither I repaired as usual, from long habitude rather than inclination, I felt feverish and uncomfortable; an insatiable thirst made me drink rather more than my wont, and in the course of the evening I sank into a heavy bilious slumber. How long I remained in that state I know not. But I remember well, that, feeling a hand laid on my arm, which kept tightening its grasp till it awoke me, I turned to my next neighbour, who was staring as if at some object of terror; and that, following his affrighted look, I beheld William sitting before me, with features wasted, care-worn, and wofully sad, and in the well-remembered attitude in which I had seen him, a little before his strange disappearance. Confounded, incapable of speech and action, did I remain for some time. At length, having caught his eye, we both started up together. "'William,' cried I, 'can this be really you?--O man! where hae ye been a' this time?' "'Mary! Mary!' cried he; 'tell me about her!' "I told him that she was alive and well. "'But, but!' said he. "'She is still unmarried,' said I, 'and as devoted to you as ever, which is more than you were entitled to expect, after having left her in the manner you did.' "'I have been a prisoner,' said he, in a mournful tone, 'in a land of which till lately I knew not the name, and I was carried away by force.' "Amid exclamations of wrath, which came from all parts of the room, and the tumultuous flocking of his old friends around him, his voice was again heard. "'And my brother?' said he; 'tell me also about him.'