“That woman had been here a few months before, workin’ on his pride and pisenen’ his mind, till he was drove out of his head, and you not here, either, to prove it was a lie by your face, which, savin’ the eyes and hair, is every inch an Irving. He acted crazy like, and mad them days, as Aleck and me noticed, and he made another will, after that woman was gone to Boston, and a spell after she went home for good. Aleck went up in the mornin’ to make a fire here in this very room, and, sittin’ in his chair, he found the Squire stark dead, and cold and stiff, and he come for me who was the only other body up as good luck would have it, and I not more’n half dressed. There was the will, lyin’ open on the table, as if he had been readin’ it, and I read it, and Aleck, too; ’twas this same will, and my blood biled like a caldron kittle, and Aleck fairly swore, and we said, what does it mean? There was a letter on the table, too, a finished letter for Roger, and I read it, and found the reason there. The Squire’s conscience had been a smitin’ him ever since he did the rascally thing, and at last he’d made up his mind to add a cod-cill, and he seemed to have a kind of forerunner that he should never see Roger agin, and so he tried to explain the bedivelment and smooth it over and all that, and signed himself, ‘Your affectionate father.’” “Did he, Hester? Did he own me at last?” Roger’s voice rang through the room like a bell, its joyful tones thrilling even Mrs. Walter Scott, who was growing greatly interested in Hester’s narrative, while Frank stood perfectly spellbound, as if fearful of losing a word of the strange story.