By the request of Mr Meriwether L. Walker, who is a neighbour of mine, I make to you the following communication on the subject of his arrangements for discharging the balance of his debt to you.— Mr Duke, you are apprised, is debtor to Mr Walker in a considerable sum, which has been the resource, on which he mainly relied, to meet his engagements with you. on the day of my departure from home, he showed me a letter, just then received, from Mr Duke, containing a positive promise, made in the most emphatic terms, to pay him between seven, & eight hundred dollars by the 10th instant, which, together with a sum he told me he had provided in another quarter, will enable him to extinguish the whole balance now due to you. If Mr Duke should disappoint him, which he does not apprehend, he will then revise by the sale of Mr Duke's bonds even at a sacrifice, what may be necessary to complete his payments to you. In any event, he pledges himself to call on you, during the Christmas holidays, prepared to pay all he owes you.— I feel satisfied myself that he will redeem this pledge, & he requested me to make the communication to you in the hope that it would obviate any uneasiness you might otherwise feel on the subject.— I avail myself of the occasion to apologize to you for not heretofore answering a letter received from you, some time ago, on the subject of some land in the neighbourhood of the Dismal Swamp jointly belonging to the representatives of Gen. Washington, those of Dr Walker, & Mr Lewis. In consequence of a long absence from home, your letter did not reach me, till some time after it’s date, & a considerable time having, therefore, unavoidably elapsed without replying to it, I did not suppose a farther delay would be attended with inconvenience. We had instituted some enquiries to ascertain the situation & value of the land, the result of which we are expecting every day, & in the mean time, I was led to believe by our advertisement of the Auditor that there was no danger of losing the land, under the present state of the laws of Virginia. I did myself the honor to call upon you in this city, during the session of the Supreme Court last winter, with a view to have a conference with you upon this subject, but was not fortunate enough to find you at home, & my health being then extremely bad, I was not able to repeat the call.— Dr Walker, as I think I informed you in a letter I had the honor to address to you last winter, takes no notice of this property in his will, & Col. Francis Walker was his residuary devisee. Col. F. Walker left but two children, Jane Francis who married Dr Mann Page of Albemarle, & Judith Page, my wife, who, together with ourselves, would, therefore, I presume, be the proper defendants to a suit respecting this property, if you should think it advisable to institute one. I have the honor to be with great respect your obt servt.