hat only to do him a mischief? Is that your religion, sir? I thought
you had something better in you than that. Am I now to think your
mildness and piety were only so much hypocrisy put on to ruin me?"

"Nay, friend, I don't want to ruin thee," said the Quaker.

"But ruin me you will, though, if you publish this discovery. Out I must
turn, and be the laughing-stock of the whole country to boot. Now, if
that is what you mean, say so, and I shall know what sort of a man you
are. Let me know at once whether you are an honest man or a cockatrice?"

"My friend," said the Quaker, "canst thou call thyself an honest man, in
practicing this deception for all these years, and depriving thy
landlord of the rent he would otherwise have got from another? And dost
thou think it would be honest in me to assist in the continuance of this
fraud?"

"I rob the landlord of nothing," replied the farmer. "I pay a good, fair
rent; but I don't want to quit the old spot. And if you had not thrust
yourself into this affair, you would have had nothing to lay on your
conscience concerning it. I must, let me tell you, look on it as a piece
of unwarrantable impertinence to come thus to my house and be kindly
treated only to turn Judas against me."

The word Judas seemed to hit the Friend a great blow.

"A Judas!"

"Yes--a Judas! a real Judas!" exclaimed the wife. "Who could have
thought it!"

"Nay, nay," said the old man. "I am no Judas. It is true, I forced
myself into it; and if you pay the landlord an honest rent, why, I don't
know that it is any business of mine--at least while you live."

"That is all we want," replied the farmer, his countenance changing, and
again flinging himself by his wife on his knees by the bed. "Promise us
never to reveal it while we live, and we shall be quite satisfied. We
have no children, and when we go, those may come to th' old spot who
will."

"Promise me never to practice this trick again," said John Basford.

"We promise faithfully," rejoined both farmer and wife.

"Then I promise too," said the Friend, "that not a whisper of what has
passed here shall pass my lips during your lifetime."

With warmest expressions of thanks, the farmer and his wife withdrew;
and John Basford, having cleared the chamber of its mystery, lay down
and passed one of the sweetest nights he ever enjoyed.

The farmer and his wife lived a good many years after this, but they
both died before Mr. Basford; and after their d