characteristics was a calm self-control, never shaken by the most startling events! And then we took ship and sailed away with our heroine to England--Augustine Washington, as became an ardent lover, following ere long. Anon, we bore her, a happy bride, home again, bringing with her a great treasure,--a portrait true to the life, every feature bearing the stamp of genuineness. Through how many pages did we gladly amplify this, chilled somewhat by fruitless searches for "Sister Susie"! "Never," said an eminent genealogist, "never reject or lose tradition. Keep it, value it, record it _as tradition_;" but surely this was not tradition. It was documentary evidence, but evidence rudely overthrown by another document,--a dry old yellow will lately found by the Rev. G. W. Beale in the archives of Northumberland County, in Virginia. CHAPTER VI REVELATIONS OF AN OLD WILL The old will proves beyond all question that Mary Ball's girlhood was not passed in Lancaster, that she had ample opportunity for education, and was, therefore, not untaught until she was sixteen. She, probably, never visited Williamsburg when seventeen,--certainly never with her mother. There never was a Sister Susie! At the time the Williamsburg letter announced the recent death of her mother, that mother had for many years been sleeping quietly in her grave. Moreover, the letter of Mary herself had done a great injustice to Gloucester parish, which was not a "poor parish" at all--with an impecunious curate working for his board--but a parish erecting at that moment so fine a church that Bishop Meade's pious humility suffered in describing it. From Dr. Beale's researches we learn that the "Rose of Epping Forest" was a tiny bud indeed when her father died; that before her fifth birthday her mother had married Captain Richard Hewes, a vestryman of St. Stephen's parish, Northumberland, and removed to that parish with her three children, John and Elizabeth Johnson, and our own little Mary Ball. In 1713, Captain Hewes died, and his inventory was filed by his "widow, Mary Hewes," who also died in the summer of 1721. "It is seldom," says Dr. Beale,[3] commenting upon her last will and testament, "that in a document of this kind, maternal affection--having other and older children to share its bequests--so concentrates itself upon a youngest daughter, and she a child of thirteen summers. Perhaps of all the tributes laid at the feet of Mary Washington, none has been more heart-felt or significant of her worth than legacies of her mother's last will and testament, written as they were, all unconsciously of her future distinction." The will discovered by the Rev. G. W. Beale settles all controversies. For the benefit of those who must see in order to believe, we copy it verbatim. [3] Rev. G. W. Beale in the _Virginia Historical Magazine_. "In the name of God Amen, the seventeenth Day December in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and twenty."