which you bore her, and
which subsisted between you. You were her nurse, her friend, her sister;
you tended her night and day during her long illness, even to the injury
of your health, and almost at the risk of your very life. Suppose,
for instance, that Mr. Hamilton had had male heirs; in that case, the
Lindsays would have been just as they are, perhaps not so well; for he
might not have left them even a legacy. Then, they unjustly tax us with
fraud, circumvention, and the practice of undue influence; and, indeed,
have endeavored to stamp an indelible stain upon your character and
honor. Every man, my dear, as the proverb has it, is at liberty to
do what he pleases with his own, according to his free will, and a
reasonable disposition. Let me hear no more of this, then, but enjoy
with gratitude that which God and your kind friend have bestowed upon
you."

We need not assure our readers that the Lindsays henceforth were
influenced by an unfriendly feeling toward the Goodwins, and that
all intercourse between the families terminated. On the part of Mrs.
Lindsay, this degenerated into a spirit of the most intense hatred and
malignity. To this enmity, however, there were exceptions in the family,
and strong ones, too, as the reader will perceive in the course of the
story.

Old Lindsay himself, although he mentioned the Goodwins with moderation,
could not help feeling strongly and bitterly the loss of property which
his children had sustained, owing to this unexpected disposition of it
by their uncle. Here, then, were two families who had lived in mutual
good-will and intimacy, now placed fronting each other in a spirit of
hostility. The Goodwins felt indignant that their motives should
be misinterpreted by what they considered deliberate falsehood and
misrepresentation; and the Lindsays could not look in silence upon
the property which they thought ought to be theirs, transferred to the
possession of strangers, who had wheedled a dotard to make a will
in their favor. Such, however, in thousands of instances, are the
consequences of the

_"Opes irritamenta malorum."_

The above facts, in connection with these two families, and the future
incidents of our narrative, we have deemed it necessary, for I the
better understanding of what follows, to place in a preliminary sketch
before our readers.

CHAPTER II. A Murderer's Wake and the Arrival of a Stranger

It is the month of June, and the sun has gone d