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enriched. It was his pleasure, when the company 

 was floated, to endow those whom he liked with 

 stock ; one, at least, never knew that he was a 

 possible rich man until the grave had closed over 

 his stealthy benefactor. And however Fleeming 

 chafed among material and business difficulties, 

 this rainbow vision never faded ; and he, like his 

 father and his mother, may be said to have died 

 upon a pleasure. But the strain told, and he 

 knew that it was telling. * I am becoming a 

 fossil,' he had written five years before, as a kind 

 of plea for a holiday visit to his beloved Italy. 

 ' Take care ! If I am Mr. Fossil, you will be Mrs. 

 Fossil, and Jack will be Jack Fossil, and all the 

 boys will be little fossils, and then we shall be 

 a collection.' There was no fear more chimerical 

 for Fleeming ; years brought him no repose ; he 

 was as packed with energy, as fiery in hope, as 

 at the first ; weariness, to which he began to be 

 no stranger, distressed, it did not quiet him. He 

 feared for himself, not without ground, the fate 

 which had overtaken his mother ; others shared 

 the fear. In the changed life now made for his 

 family, the elders dead, the sons going from home 

 upon their education, even their tried domestic 

 (Mrs. Alice Dunns) leaving the house after twenty- 

 two years of service, it was not unnatural that 

 he should return to dreams of Italy. He and 

 his wife were to go (as he told me) on 'a real 



