passive, docile being, and they made her tell all that was wanted,
and sign her deposition, as she had signed her will, as Faith Trevor,
commonly known as Faith Dayman.

She did not live many days after. It was on the 3rd of February,
1836, that she died; and in the course of the summer Hester had a
son, who throve as none of her babies had done.

Then she lay and brooded over him and the rights she fancied he was
deprived of, till she worked herself up to a strong and fixed
purpose, and insisted upon making all known to her father. Now that
her mother was gone she persuaded herself that he had been a cruel,
faithless tyrant, who had wilfully deserted his young wife.

Joel Lea would not listen to her. Why should she wish to make his
son a good-for-nothing English lord? That was his view. Nothing but
misery, distress, and temptation could come of not letting things
alone. He held to that, and there were no means forthcoming either
of coming to England to present herself. The family were well to do,
but had no ready money to lay out on a passage across the Atlantic.
Nor would Hester wait. She had persuaded herself that a letter would
be suppressed, even if she had known how to address it; but to claim
her son's rights, and make an earl of him, had become her fixed idea,
and she began laying aside every farthing in her power.

In this she was encouraged, not by the lawyer who had made the will--
and who, considering that poor Faith's witnesses had been destroyed,
and her certificate and her wedding ring taken from her by the
Indians, thought that the marriage could not be substantiated--but by
a clever young clerk, who had managed to find out the state of