"'You declare yourself then to have been unduly influenced by your brother in making the will you have just signed in the presence of these two witnesses?' "To which she replied with every evidence of a clear mind---- "'I do; I do. I could not move, I could not breathe, I could not think except as he willed it. When he was near, and he was always near, I had to do just as he wished--perhaps because I was afraid of him, perhaps because he had the stronger will of the two, I do not know; I cannot explain it, but he ruled me and has done so all my life till this hour. Now he has left me, left me to die, as he thinks, unfriended and alone, but I am strong yet, stronger than he knows, and before I turn my face to the wall, I will tear my property from his unholy grasp and give it where I have always wanted it to go--to my poor, lost, unfortunate sister.' "'Ah,' thought I, 'I see, I see'; and satisfied at last that I was no longer being made the minister of an unscrupulous avarice, I hastily drew up a second will, only pausing to ask the name of her sister and the place of her residence. "'Her name is Harriet Smith,' was the quick reply, 'and she lived when last I heard of her in Marston, a little village in Connecticut. She may be dead now, it is so long since I received any news of her,--Hiram would never let me write to her,--but she may have had children, and if so, they are just as welcome as she is to the little I have to give.' "'Her children's names?' I asked. "'I don't know, I don't know anything about her. But you will find out everything necessary when I am gone; and if she is living, or has children, you will see that they are reinstated in the home of their ancestors. For,' she now added eagerly, 'they must come here to live, and build up this old house again and make it respectable once more or they cannot have my money. I want you to put that in my will; for when I have seen these old walls toppling, the doors wrenched off, and its lintels demolished for firewood, for _firewood_, sir, I have kept my patience alive and my hope up by saying, Never mind; some day Harriet's children will make this all right again. The old house which their kind grandfather was good enough to give me for my own, shall not fall to the ground without one effort on my part to save it. And this is how I will accomplish it. This house is for Harriet or Harriet's children if they will come here and live in it one year, but if they will not do this, let it go to my brother, for I shall have no more interest in it. You heed me, lawyer?' "I nodded and wrote on busily, thinking, perhaps, that if Harriet or Harriet's children did not have some money of their own to fix up this old place, they would scarcely care to accept their forlorn inheritance. Meantime the two witnesses who had lingered at the woman's whispered entreaty exchanged glances, and now and then a word expressive of the interest they were taking in this unusual affair.