actually been trepanned and carried away by persons to him unknown, the
burning of the house of her foster-mother having been devised and
executed merely to give colour to the story of her death. Who were the
perpetrators of such an outrage, and for what purpose it had been
devised, he affected to be ignorant; though he threw out many hints and
surmises of a character more painful to Edith and Roland than even the
loss of the property. These hints Roland could not persuade himself to
repeat to the curious Kentuckian, since they went, in fact, to charge his
own father, and Edith's, with the crime of having themselves concealed
the child, for the purpose of removing the only bar to their expectations
of succession.

Whatever might be thought of this singular story, it gained some
believers, and was enough in the hands of Braxley, a man of great address
and resolution, and withal, a lawyer, to enable him to laugh to scorn the
feeble efforts made by the impoverished Roland to bring it to the test of
legal arbitrament. Despairing, in fact, of his cause, after a few trials
had convinced him of his impotence, and perhaps himself almost believing
the tale to be true, the young man gave up the contest, and directed his
thoughts to the condition of his cousin Edith; who, upon the above
circumstances being made known, had received a warm invitation to the
house and protection of her only female relative, a married lady, whose
husband had, two years before, emigrated to the Falls of Ohio, where he
was now a person of considerable importance. This invitation determined
the course to be pursued. The young man instantly resigned his
commission, and converting the little property that remained into
articles necessary to the emigrant, turned his face to the boundless
West, and with his helpless kinswoman at his side, plunged at once into
the forest. A home for Edith in the house of a relative was the first
object of his desires; his second, as he had already mentioned, was to