“Not in the one I gave to you, I know. That he must have begun first, and quit, because he blotched it, or something. Any ways, there was another one finished for you, and in it he said he was goin’ to fix the will, add a cod-cil or something, because he said it was unjust.” “Why did you withhold that letter from me, Hester, and where is it now?” Roger spoke a little sternly, and glad of an excuse to turn his attention from herself to some one else, Hester replied,— “It was in the same box with t’other paper, and I s’pose _she’s_ got it who snooped till she found the will.” She glanced meaningly at Mrs. Walter Scott, who deigned her no reply, but who began to feel uneasy with regard to the letter of which she had not before heard, and whose contents she did not know. Neither Roger nor Frank wished to mix Magdalen up with the matter, if possible to avoid it, and no mention was made of her then, and Hester was suffered to believe it was Mrs. Walter Scott who had found the will. “You read the letter, Hester. Tell me what was in it,” Roger said. And then Hester’s face flushed, and her eyes flashed fire, as she replied,— “There was in it that which had never or’ to be writ. He giv the reason why he made this will. He was driv to it by somebody who pisoned his mind with the biggest, most impossible slander agin the sweetest, innocentest woman that ever drawed the breath.” Roger was listening eagerly now, with a fiery gleam in his blue eyes, and his nostrils quivering with indignation. Mrs. Walter Scott was listening, too, her face very pale, except where a bright spot of red burned on her cheeks, and her lips slightly apart, showing her white teeth. Frank was listening also, and gradually coming to an understanding of what had been so mysterious before. Neither of the three thought of interrupting Hester, who had the field to herself, and who, now that she was fairly launched, went on rapidly: “I’ll make a clean breast of it, bein’ the will is found, which I never meant it should be, and then them as is mistress here now can take me to jail as soon as they likes. It don’t matter, the few days I’ve got left to live. I signed that fust Will, me and Aleck, twenty odd year ago, and more, and I knew pretty well what was in it, and that it was right, and gin the property to the proper person; and then I thought no more about it till a few months before he died, when Aleck and me was called in agin to witness another will, here in this room, standin’ about as I set now, with the old gentleman where _that_ woman is, Aleck where you be, and Lawyer Schofield where Mr. Franklin stands. I thought it was a queer thing, and mistrusted somethin’ wrong, particularly as I remembered a conversation I overheard a week or so before about you, Roger, and your mother, compared to who, that other woman ain’t fit to live in the same place; and she won’t neither, she’ll find, when we all get our dues.”