“Yes, I’m pretty sure he did,” Hester said, in reply to Roger’s question. “Any way, he said he had forgiven your mother, and he would leave _her_ letter with his, for you, in case he never see you, and I gin you your mother’s, but kept his, because that would have told you about the will, which I meant to hide. We both thought on’t to once, Aleck and me, but I spoke first, bein’ a woman, and mentioned the promise to consider Roger’s interest before any body’s else, and Jessie seemed to be there with us, and haunted me, with the great blue eyes of hern, till I made up my mind, and took the pesky thing and the letter, and put ’em away safe up in the garret under the floor, where I’d had a piece sawed out a spell before, so as to put pisen under there for the rats. Then I moved an old settee over the place, and chairs and things, so that it would look as if nobody had been there for ages. He must have begun another letter first and blotched it, for the sheet lay there, and I took it as a special Providence and kept it for Roger, as his father’s last words to him. I knew t’other will was not destroyed, for I’d seen it not long before, and I found it in his writing-desk, sealed up like a drum, and left it there, and then she came with her lofty airs, and queened it over us, as if she thought she was lord of all; but her feathers drooped a bit when the will was read, and she thought the old Harry was in it, and hinted, and snooped, and rummaged the very first night, for I found her there, with her night gownd on, and more than forty papers stickin’ in her hair, though why she thought ’twas there, is more than I know; but she’s hunted the garret ever since by turns, and I moved it twice, and then carried it back, and once she set Magdalen at it, she or _he_, it’s little matter which.” Magdalen was a sore point with Roger, and he shuddered, when her name was mentioned, and thought of the letter, and wondered if she had it, and would ever bring it to him. “I was easy enough when that woman wasn’t here,” Hester continued, “and I did think for a spell, she’d met with a change, she was so soft and so velvety and so nice, that butter couldn’t melt in her mouth if it should try. Maybe she’s forgot what she sprung from, but I knew the Browns, root and branch; they allus was a peekin’, rummagin’ set, and her uncle peeked into a money drawer once. She comes honestly by her snoopin’ that found the will.” Mrs. Walter Scott had borne a great deal of abuse from Hester, and borne it quietly after her appeal to Frank, but now she could keep still no longer, and she half rose from her chair, and exclaimed: “Silence, old woman, or I will have you put out of the house, and I hold Frank less than a man if he will hear me so abused. I never found the will. It was Magdalen Lennox who found it, just where you told her it was when you were crazy.”