"Eh, yes, if you can't stop 'um!" said the old crone, rubbing her skinny
hands together as if this, at least, pleased her. "Has you tried,
honey?"

Egbert Crawford, Tombs lawyer, as has before been said, was much more in
the habit of putting others under close cross-examination, than allowing
himself to be subjected to the same sifting process. But whether he had
his own motives for telling the old woman the truth, or whether he saw
that those coal black old eyes were looking through him and divining all
that he wished or intended--he certainly submitted to the question and
told the truth, in the present instance:

"Yes, d--n him once more!"

"You want Mary and de property bofe?" asked the old woman again.

"Both!" answered the lawyer, after one more instant of hesitation and
one more glance into the coal black eyes. "I don't care if you know all
about it--you _daren't_ betray me, for your life!"

"Don't _want_ to, honey!" was all the old woman's reply; and the lawyer
went on:

"I have been twice up at West Falls since Dick was taken ill, and I
think I have set some reports in circulation there, that may make Miss
Mary hesitate, if they do not change the old man's will. How will that
do, Aunt Synchy--you old black anatomy? Eh?"

"Spose I am an 'atomy," said the old woman, apparently rather pleased
with the epithet than otherwise. "But Lor' bress you, chile, dat won't
do at all! You ain't ole enough yet!" and there was an unmistakable
sneer on the withered black face, to think that any body could be so
verdant.

"Ah!" said Egbert Crawford, who neither liked the sneer nor the
intimation. "What more could I do, I should like to know?"

What was it that Jeremy Taylor said--that old silver-tongued Bishop of
Down, Connor and Dromore, in Ireland?--"No disease cometh so much with
our breath, drinking from the infected lips of others, as with the
vessels of our own bodies that are ready to receive it." Shakspeare
says the same thing of mirth, when he records that

"A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it."

Artemus Ward, when he sets whole audiences into broad roars of laughter
over his odd conceits of "carrying peppermint to General Price" or
"going to be measured for an umbrella," may doubt the truth of this
assertion; and Lester Wallack or Ned Sothern, when inspiring chuckles
that almost threaten the life, may share in the infidelity: but let al