"'I have not spoken,' said she, 'for two days; I have been saving my strength. Hark!' she suddenly whispered. 'He has no light, he will pitch over the landing. No, no, he has gone by it in safety, he has reached——' she paused and listened intently, trembling as she did so—'Will he go into that room?—Run! follow! see if he has dared—but no, he has gone down to the kitchen,' came in quick glad relief from her lips as a distant door shut softly at the back end of the house. 'He is leaving the house and will never come back. I am released forever from his watchfulness; I am free! Now, sir, draw up another will, quick; let these two kind friends wait and see me sign it, and God will bless you for your kindness and my eyes will close in peace upon this cruel world.' "Aghast but realizing in a moment that she had but lent herself to her brother's wishes in order to rid herself of a surveillance which had possibly had an almost mesmeric influence upon her, I opened my portfolio again, saying: [31] "'You declare yourself then to have been unduly influenced by your brother in making the will you have just signed in the presence of these two witnesses?' [31] "To which she replied with every evidence of a clear mind—— "'I do; I do. I could not move, I could not breathe, I could not think except as he willed it. When he was near, and he was always near, I had to do just as he wished—perhaps because I was afraid of him, perhaps because he had the stronger will of the two, I do not know; I cannot explain it, but he ruled me and has done so all my life till this hour. Now he has left me, left me to die, as he thinks, unfriended and alone, but I am strong yet, stronger than he knows, and before I turn my face to the wall, I will tear my property from his unholy grasp and give it where I have always wanted it to go—to my poor, lost, unfortunate sister.' "'Ah,' thought I, 'I see, I see'; and satisfied at last that I was no longer being made the minister of an unscrupulous avarice, I hastily drew up a second will, only pausing to ask the name of her sister and the place of her residence. "'Her name is Harriet Smith,' was the quick reply, 'and she lived when last I heard of her in Marston, a little village in Connecticut. She may be dead now, it is so long since I received any news of her,—Hiram would never let me write to her,—but she may have had children, and if so, they are just as welcome as she is to the little I have to give.'
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