British and loyal; and after presuming a dozen times or more to disclose
and defend his hatred, he put the coping-stone to his audacity, by
suddenly leaving his uncle's house, two years after he had been received
into it, and galloping away, a cornet in one of the companies of the
first regiment of horse which Virginia sent to the armies of Congress.
He never more saw his uncle. He cared little for his wrath or its
effects; if disinherited himself, it pleased his imagination to think he
had enriched his gentle cousin. But his uncle carried his resentment
further than he had dreamed, or indeed any one else who had beheld the
show of affection he continued to the orphan Edith up to the last moment
of his existence. He died in October of the preceding year, a week before
the capitulation at York-town, and almost within the sound of the guns
that proclaimed the fall of the cause he had so loyally espoused. From
this place of victory Roland departed to seek his kinswoman. He found her
in the house--not of his fathers, but of a stranger--herself a destitute
and homeless orphan. No will appeared to pronounce her the mistress of
the wealth he had himself rejected; but, in place of it, the original
testament in favour of Major Forrester's own child was produced by
Braxley, his confidential friend and attorney, who, by it, was appointed
both executor of the estate and trustee to the individual in whose favour
it was constructed.

The production of such a testament, so many years after the death of the
girl, caused no little astonishment; but this was still further increased
by what followed, the aforesaid Braxley instantly taking possession of
the whole estate in the name of the heiress, who, he made formal
deposition, was, to the best of his belief, yet alive, and would appear
to claim her inheritance. In support of this extraordinary averment, he
produced, or professed himself ready to produce, evidence to show that
Forrester's child, instead of being burned to death as was believed, had