“Magdalen found it, and brought it to _you_ instead of burnin’ it up!” old Hester exclaimed, raising her hands in astonishment, and feeling her blood grow hot against the poor girl. “Magdalen found it, after all he has done for her! She’s a _viper_ then; and my curse be—” She did not finish the sentence, for both Roger and Frank laid a hand upon her mouth, and stopped the harsh words she would have spoken. “You don’t know the circumstances. You shall not speak so of Magdalen,” Roger said, while Frank, glad of a chance to prove that he _was_ a man even if he had allowed his mother to be abused, said sternly: “Mrs. Floyd, I have stood quietly by and heard my mother insulted, but when you attack Magdalen I can keep still no longer. _She_ must not be slandered in my presence. I hope she will be my wife.” Hester gave a violent start, and a sudden gleam of intelligence came into her eyes, as she replied, “Oh, I see now. She wasn’t content to have you alone, and I don’t blame her for that. It would be a sickening pill to swaller, you and that woman too but she must take advantage of my crazy talk, and find the will which makes her lover a nabob. That’s what I call gratitude to me and Roger, for all we’ve done for her. Much good may her money and lover do her!” Thus speaking, Hester rose from her chair and went toward Roger, who had sat as rigid as a stone while she put into words what, as the shadow of a thought, he had tried so hard to fight down. “I’m done now,” she said. “I’ve told all I know about the will. I hid it, Aleck and me, and I ain’t sorry neither, and I’m ready to go to jail any minit the new lords see fit to send me.” She started for the door, but came back again to Roger, and, laying her hand on his hair, said soothingly, and in a very different tone from the one she had assumed when addressing Frank or his mother: “Don’t take it so hard, my boy. We’ll git along somehow. I ain’t so very old. There’s a good deal of vim in me yet, and me and Aleck will work like dogs for you. We’ll sell the tavern stand, and you shall have the hull it fetches. Your father give us the money to buy it, you know.” Roger could not fail to be touched by this generous unselfishness, and he grasped the hard-wrinkled hand, and tried to smile, as he said: “Thank you, Hester, I knew you would not desert me; but I shall not need your little fortune. I can work for us all.” It was growing dark by this time, and the bell had thrice sent forth its summons to dinner. As Roger finished speaking, it rang again, and, glad of an excuse to get away, old Hester said, “What do they mean by keepin’ that bell a dingin’ when they might know we’d something on hand of more account than victuals and drink. I’ll go and see to’t myself.”