"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 all these remember that their audiences come to be amused, and that their best drolleries might fall very flat indeed at a Quaker meeting or in a hospital devoted to men with the jumping tooth-ache! The conditions of Crime are like those of Disease and Mirth—the patient must be ready before the inoculation can take place. Eve was unquestionably wishing for a break in the already dull routine of her life in Eden, before the Serpent dared to make his appearance; and Arnold had some treason crudely floating through his mind, even if not that particular treason, before the overtures of the British commander led him to the attempted betrayal of the Key of the Highlands. Egbert Crawford, Tombs lawyer, when he said to Aunt Synchy, "What more could I do, I should like to know?" meant to be understood as asserting that nothing more was in his power; but there was really in his heart the wish for aid in some higher crime to effect his purposes; and the tempter came!