“But,” he added, “if it be any satisfaction to you to know it, I have not forgotten my relations, to whom I have left the legacies originally intended for them.  I would have left it directly to Henry Woodward, were it not that his grasping mother sent him to another relation, from whom she calculated that he might have larger expectations; and I hope he may realize them.  At all events, my relatives will find themselves in exactly the same position as if our beloved Agnes had lived.”

Mr. Hamilton, then advanced in years—­for Agnes might be termed the child of his old age—­did not survive her death twelve months.  That afflicting event fairly broke him down.  Death, however, to him had no terrors, because he had nothing to detain him here.  On the contrary, he looked to it only as a release from sorrow; an event that would soon wipe away all tears from his eyes, draw the sting of affliction from his heart, and restore him once more to his beloved Agnes and her dear mother.  He looked forward only to close his eyes against the world and sleep with them—­and so he did.

When his will was opened, the astonishment and dismay of his relations may be! easily imagined, as well as the bitterness of their disappointment.  The bequeathal of the bulk of his property to a stranger, who I could urge no claim of consanguinity upon him, absolutely astonished them; and their resentment at his caprice—­or rather what they termed his dotage—­was not only deep, but loud.  To say the truth, such an unexpected demise of property was strongly calculated to try their temper.  After the death of Agnes—­an event which filled the unfeeling and worldly heart of her aunt with delight—­they made many a domestic calculation, and held many a family council as to the mode in which their uncle’s property might be distributed among them, and many anticipations were the result, because there was none in the usual descent of property to inherit it but themselves.  Now, in all this, they acted very naturally—­just, perhaps, as you or I, gentle reader, would act if placed in similar circumstances, and sustained by the same expectations.

In the meantime matters were not likely to rest in quiet.  Murmurs went abroad, hints were given, and broader assertions advanced, that the old man had not been capable of making a will, and that his mind had been so completely disordered and prostrated by excessive grief for the loss of his daughter, that he became the dupe and victim of undue influence in the person of a selfish and artful girl—­that artful girl being no other than Alice Goodwin, aided and abetted by her family.  Every circumstance, no matter how trivial, that could be raked up and collected, was now brought together, and stamped with a character of significance, in order to establish his dotage and their fraud.  It is not necessary to dwell upon this.  In due time the matter came to a trial, for the will had been disputed, and, after a patient hearing, its validity was completely established, and all the hopes and expectations of the Lindsays blown into air.