Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

  CHAPTER VII.

  INTRODUCTION OF THE CONTRABAND, WITH SOME REFLECTIONS THEREON--THREEMONTHS BEFORE--AUNT SYNCHY AND THE OBI POISONING--A NICE LITTLEARRANGEMENT OF EGBERT CRAWFORD'S.

  Here it becomes necessary to pause and introduce a new and altogetherindispensable character. Not new to the world--sorrow for the world thatit is not! Not new to the country--wo to the country that it has filledso large a place in its history! But something new in this veraciousnarration--the _contraband_. The negro must come in, by all means and atall hazards. Time was when romances and even histories could be writtenwithout such an introduction; but that time is past and perhaps pastforever. "I and Napoleon," said the courier of Arves, relating someincident in which he had temporarily become associated with the fortunesof the Great Captain; and "I and the white man" may Sambo say at nodistant day, without presumption and without outraging the dignity ofposition. It was a very harmless monster that Frankenstein constructed,apparently; but it grew to be a very fearful and tyrannical monsterbefore he was quite done with it. No doubt the first black face thatgrinned on the Virginian shore, a couple of centuries ago, seemed morean object of mirth than of terror--and it certainly gave promise ofprofit. But he is a man of mirthful disposition who sees anything tolaugh at in the same black face, grown older and broader and much lesscomical, on the shore of the same Virginia to-day. The white race andthe black--the sharp profile and the broad lip--the springing instep andthe protuberant heel--have been having a long tussle, with theprobabilities for a while all on the side of the white: to-day thestruggle is doubtful if not decided in favor of the black. "Here we go,up--up--uppy! Here we go, down--down--downy!" the children used to singwhen playing see-saw with a broad plank on the fence; and _they_understood, what their elders sometimes forget--that the rebound ofextreme height is descent. One more illustration, before this train ofthought necessarily ceases.

  Is it not recorded in all the books of relative history, that theNormans, under William the Conqueror, invaded and subjugated SaxonEngland and made virtual slaves of the unfortunate countrymen of Harold?Yet who were the conquered eventually? England was Saxon within fiftyyears of Hastings: England is Saxon to-day. The broad bosom of the Saxonmother, even when the sire of her child was a ravisher, gave out dropsof strength that moulded it in spite of him, to be at last her avengerand his master! The Saxon pirate still sweeps the seas in hisdescendants: the Norman robber is only heard of at long intervals whenhe meets his opportunity at a Balaklava. The revenges of history arefearful; and if the end of human experience is not reached in ourdownfall, other races will be careful never to rivet a chain of caste orcolor, or so to rivet it that no meddling fingers of fanaticism can everunloose the shackle!

  Perhaps it is proper as well as inevitable that the negro should havechanged his place and mounted astride of the national neck instead ofbeing trodden under the national foot. Everything else in oursurroundings has changed--why not he? We do not yet quite understand thefact--it may be; but the foundations of the old in society have beenbroken up as effectually, within the past two years, as were those ofthe great deep at the time of Noah's flood. The old deities of fashionhave been swept away in the flood of revolution. The millionaire of twoyears ago, intent at that time on the means by which the revenues fromhis brown-stone houses and pet railroad stocks could be spent to themost showy advantage, has become the struggling man of to-day, intentupon keeping up appearances, and happy if diminished and doubtful rentscan even be made to meet increasing taxes. The struggling man of thattime has meanwhile sprung into fortune and position, through luckyadventures in government transportations or army-contracts; and thejewelers of Broadway and Chestnut Street are busy resetting the diamondsof decayed families, to sparkle on brows and bosoms that only a littlewhile ago beat with pride at an added weight of California paste orKentucky rock-crystal. The most showy equipages that flashed last summerat Newport and Saratoga, were never seen between the bathing-beach andFort Adams, or between Congress Spring and the Lake, in the old days;and on the "Dinorah" nights at the Academy[4] there have been new facesin the most prominent boxes, almost as _outre_ and unaccustomed in theirappearance as was that of the hard-featured Western President, framed ina shock head and a turn-down collar, meeting the gaze of astonishedMurray Hill, when he passed an hour there on his way to theinauguration.

  [Footnote 4: December 1862.]

  Quite as notable a change has taken place in personal reputation. Manyof the men on whom the country depended as most likely to prove abledefenders in the day of need, have not only discovered to the worldtheir worthlessness, but filled up the fable of the man who leaned upona reed, by fatally piercing those whom they had betrayed to their fall.Bubble-characters have burst, and high-sounding phrases have beenexploded. Men whose education and antecedents should have made thembrave and true, have shown themselves false and cowardly--impotent forgood, and active only for evil. Unconsidered nobodies have meanwhilesprung forth from the mass of the people, and equally astonishedthemselves and others by the power, wisdom and courage they havedisplayed. In cabinet and camp, in army and navy, in the editorial chairand in the halls of eloquence, the men from whom least was expected havedone most, and those upon whom the greatest expectations had beenfounded have only given another proof of the fallacy of all humancalculations. All has been change, all has been transition, in theestimation men have held of themselves and the light in which theypresented themselves to each other.

  Opinions of duties and recognitions of necessities have known a changenot less remarkable. What yesterday we believed to be fallacy, to-day weknow to be the truth. What seemed the fixed and immutable purpose of Godonly a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have beenfounded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal haspassed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability.The storm has been raging around us, and doing its work not the lessdestructively because we failed to perceive that we were passing throughanything more threatening than a summer shower. While we have stood uponthe bank of the swelling river, and pointed to some structure of oldrising on the bank, declaring that not a stone could be moved until thevery heavens should fall, little by little the foundations have beenundermined, and the full crash of its falling has first awoke us fromour security. That without which we said that the nation could not live,has fallen and been destroyed; and yet we know not whether the nationdies, or grows to a better and more enduring life. What we cherished wehave lost; what we did not ask or expect has come to us; the effete butreliable old is passing away, and out of the ashes of its decay isspringing forth a new so unexpected and so little prepared for that itmay be salvation or destruction as the hand of God shall rule. The pastof the nation lies with the sunken Cumberland in the waters of HamptonRoads; its future floats about in a new-fangled Monitor, that may combatand defeat the navies of the world or go to the bottom with oneinglorious plunge.[5] And this general transition brings us back to thenegro, whose apotheosis is after all only a part of the inevitable, andmay be only the flash before his final and welcome disappearance.

  [Footnote 5: Written three days before the foundering of the Monitor offHatteras, Dec. 31st 1862.]

  Our contraband is a woman, and she comes upon the scene of action inthis wise, retrospectively.

  Some three months before the events recorded in the preceding chapters,to wit about the middle of March, Egbert Crawford, Tombs lawyer, doing athriving business in the line especially affected by such gentry, andnot yet elevated to a Colonel's commission in the volunteer army by theparental forethought of Governor Edwin D. Morgan,--had occasion to visitthat portion of Thomas Street lying between West Broadway and Hudson.The locality is not by any means a pleasant one, either for the eye orthe other senses, and the character of the street is not materiallyimproved by the recollection of the Ellen Jewett murder, which occurredon the south side, within a few doors of Hudson. Garbage left unremovedby Hackley festers alike on pavement, sidewalk and gutter; and a mass ofblack and whi
te humanity (the former predominating) left unremoved bythe civilization of New York in the last half of the nineteenth century,festers within the crazy and tumble-down tenements. Colored cottonhandkerchiefs wrapping woolly heads, and shoes slouched at the heelfurnishing doubtful covering to feet redolent of filth and crippled bydisease--alternate with the scanty habiliments of black and whitechildren, brought up in the kennel and reduced by blows, mud andexposure to a woful similarity of hue. The whiskey bottle generallyaccompanies the basket with a quart of decayed potatoes, from thegrocery at the corner; and even the begged calf's-liver or the stolenbeef-bone comes home accompanied by a flavor of bad gin. It is no wonderthat the few shutters hang by the eye-lids, and that even the wagon-boyswho vend antediluvian vegetables from castaway wagons drawn bytwenty-shilling horse-frames, hurry through without any hope in theyells intended to attract custom.

  Any observer who should have seen the neatly-dressed lawyer peering intothe broken doors and up the black staircases of Thomas Street, wouldnaturally have supposed his visit connected with some revelation ofcrime, and that he was either looking up a witness whose testimony mightbe necessary to save a perilled burglar from Sing Sing, or takingmeasures to keep one hidden who might have told too much if brought uponthe witness-stand. And yet Egbert Crawford was really visiting that denof black squalor with a very different object--to find an old darkeywoman who was reported as living in that street, and in his capacity asone of the eleven hundred and fifty Commissioners of Deeds of the Cityand County of New York, to procure her "X mark" and take heracknowledgment in the little matter of a quitclaim deed. A very harmlesspurpose, in itself, certainly; and yet the observer might have beennearer right in his suspicion than even the lawyer himself believed,when the whole result of the visit was taken into account.

  One of the ricketty houses on the south side of the street, not far fromthe Ellen Jewett house, and not much further from the equally celebratedpanel-house which furnished the weekly papers with illustrations of thatpeculiar species of man-trap a few years ago--seemed to the seeker tobear out the description that had been given him. The door was wideopen, and all within appeared to be a sort of dark cabin out of whichissued occasional sounds of quarrelling voices and continual puffs offetid air foul enough to sicken the strongest stomach. He went in, asone of the lost might go into Pandemonium, impelled by an imperiousnecessity. He mounted the ricketty and creaking stair, with thebannister half gone and the steps groaning beneath his tread as if theycontained the spirits of the dead respectability that had left them halfa century before. He had been told that the old woman lived on the thirdfloor, and though he met no one he concluded to dare the perils of asecond ascent, in spite of the landing place being in almost pitchydarkness. Rushing along with a hasty step that even the gloom could notmake a slower one, he felt something bump against his knees and thelower part of his body, and then something human fell to the floor witha crash that had the jingling of broken crockery blended with it.

  "Boo! hoo! hoo! e-e-e-gh! Mammy! Mammy!" yelled a voice. "Boo! hoo! hoo!e-e-e-gh! Mammy! Mammy!" and Crawford could just discern that he had runover and partially demolished a little negro boy carrying a pitcher, thepitcher and the boy seeming to have suffered about equally. Neither ofthem had any nose left, to speak of; and the little imp did not make anyeffort to rise from the floor, but lay there and yelled merrily. Thevictor in the collision did not have much time for inspection, for themoment after a door at the back end of the passage opened hurriedly, anda hideous old negro woman came rushing out, with a sputtering fragmentof lighted tallow-candle in her hand, and exclaiming:

  "What's de matter, Jeffy? Here am Mamma!"

  "Big man run'd ober me! broke de pitcher! Boo! hoo! hoo!" yelled theblack atom in reply, without any additional effort at getting up.

  "Get out ob dar! d--n you, I run'd ober _you_, mind dat!" screeched outthe old woman, catching sight of the dark form of Crawford. "Hurtin'leetle boys!--I pay you for it, honey!"

  "I hit him accidentally," said the lawyer, who had no intention ofgetting into a row in that "negro quarter." "It was dark, and I did notsee him. I'll pay for the pitcher."

  "Will you, honey?" said the old woman, mollifying instantly. "Well den,'spose you couldn't help it. Get up, Jeffy."

  "Can you tell me whether Mrs. ---- lives on any of the floors of thishouse?" asked Crawford.

  "Nebber mind dat, till you gib me de money!" answered the old woman, notto be diverted by any side-issues. "Dat are pitcher cost a quarter,honey!"

  Crawford was feeling in his pocket for one of the quarters that yetremained in that receptacle, preparatory to going out of circulationaltogether,--when the old crone, eager for the money, stuck her candlesomewhat nearer his face than it had before been held. Instantly herwithered face assumed a new expression of intelligence, and her handshook so that she almost dropped the candle, as she cried:

  "Merciful Lord and Marser! If dat are ain't young Egbert Crawford!"

  "My name is certainly Egbert Crawford!" said that individual, very muchsurprised in his turn. "But who are you that know _me_?"

  "Don't know his ole Aunt Synchy!" exclaimed the old woman.

  "Aunt Synchy! Aunt Synchy!" said the lawyer, trying to recollect thepast very rapidly, and catching some glimmers. "What? Aunt Synchy thatused to live at--"

  "Used to live at old Tom Crawford's. Lor bress you, yes! Why come in,honey!" and before the lawyer could answer further, he was literallydragged through the dingy door by the still vigorous old woman, andfound himself inside her apartment, Master Jeffy and his pitcher beingleft neglected on the entry floor.

  Once within the door, and in the better light afforded even by the dingywindows, Crawford had a better opportunity to observe the old woman, andhe now found no difficulty in recalling something more than the name.She might have been sixty-five or seventy years of age, to judge by thewrinkles on her face and the white of her eyebrows, though her hair washidden under a gaudy and dirty cotton plaid handkerchief and her tallform seemed little bowed by age. Two coal-black eyes, showing nodiminution of their natural fire, gleamed from under those whiteeyebrows; and on the portions of the cheeks yet left smooth enough toshow the texture of the skin, there were deep gashes that had once beenthe tattooing of her barbarian youth and beauty. Her hands werewithered, much more than her face, and seemed skinny and claw-like. Herdress, which had once been plaid cotton gingham, was fearfully dirty andunskilfully patched with other material; and the frayed silk shawlthrown around her old shoulders might have been rescued from a rag-heapin the streets to serve that turn.

  The room, as Crawford readily noticed, was almost as remarkable inappearance as the old woman herself. There was nothing singular in thebare floor, the pine table and two or three broken chairs; for somethingvery like them, or worse, can be found in almost every miserabletenement where virtue struggles or vice swelters, in the slums of thegreat city. Neither was there anything notable in the smoke-greasedwalls and ceiling, the miserable fire-place with one cracked kettle anda red earthen bowl, and the wretched bed of rags stuck away in one ofthe corners, on which evidently both the old crone and Master Jeffy madetheir sad pretence at sleep.

  But what really was singular in the appearance of the apartment, andwhat Crawford noted at once, although he did not allude to it untilafterwards, was--first, a ghastly attempt at painting, hanging behindthe chimney, representing a death's-head and cross-bones, which mighthave been executed by an artist in whitewash, on a ground of blackmuslin. Second, a hanging shelf in one corner, with a dozen or two ofdingy small bottles and vials, and a rod lying across it, apparentlymade from a black birchen switch, peeled in sections. Third, and mostimportant of all, a string of twine suspended from one side of the roomto the other, in front of the fire-place and near the ceiling, and hungwith objects that required a moment to recognize. Among them, whenclosely examined, could be found two or three bats, dried; a string ofsnake's eggs, blackened by being smoked; a tail and two legs of a blackcat; a bunch of the dried
leaves of the black hellebore; a snake'sskin--not the "shedder" or superficial skin, but the cuticle itself,peeled from the writhing reptile; two objects that might have beenspotted toads, run over by wagons until thoroughly flattened--thendried; and one object which could not well be anything more or less thanthe hand of a child a few weeks old, cut off just above the wrist andsubjected to some kind of embalming or drying process.

  The purposes of this narrative do not require the recording of all theconversation which took place between the Tombs lawyer and Aunt Synchy,when the latter had dusted off one of the miserable chairs and forcedthe former down into it, taking another herself, sitting square in frontof him, and thrusting her face so close into his that the witheredfeatures seemed almost plastered against his own. It is enough to saythat that conversation corroborated the suspicion which the first wordsof the crone would have engendered--that Aunt Synchy, in her youngerdays, had been a slave in the Crawford family, in a neighboring Statewhere the institution had not yet been entirely abolished--and that, atlast manumitted by a mistaken kindness, she had finally wandered away tothe crime and misery of negro life in the great city. She retained, aspeople of that feudal class always do, a vivid recollection of her earlylife and of all the residents of the section where she had lived; andEgbert Crawford, who was in the habit of putting many questions toothers, was not in the habit of answering quite so many as the old womanput to him concerning the intermediate histories of the families ofwhich she had now lost sight for more than a quarter of a century.

  In this conversation it became apparent, too, that Thomas Crawford, thefather of Egbert, had been the quasi owner of Synchy, and that sheretained for the son something of that singular attachment which appearsto be inseparable from any description of feudality. Thomas Crawford, itwould appear, had had two brothers, Richard, the father of the presentRichard Crawford and of John, the soldier, both Thomas and Richard beingthen dead and their families in the country broken up. Another brother,John, had become very wealthy, and appeared to be living, with Mary, anonly daughter, at West Falls, in the Oneida Valley. Finally, it becamequite apparent that the old crone, whatever her attachment to the familyof Thomas Crawford, did not hold the same feudal regard for some of theother members of the family--in short, that she had retained the memoryof certain supposed early slights and injuries, quite as closely as shehad done the softer and more grateful sentiments towards others.

  "So Dick am rich, am he, honey? an you am poor? Tut! tut! dat is too badfor de son of ole Marser Tom!" said the old crone, after the lapse ofhalf an hour in which both tongues had been running pretty rapidly.

  "He is," said Crawford, his face expressing no strong sense ofsatisfaction at the recollection. "He bought property in the new partsof the city, twelve or fifteen years ago, and the rise has been so greatthat it has made him rich. He is now living on Murray Hill, in style,though, d--n him!" and the face now was very sinister indeed, "he hasbeen attacked with inflammatory rheumatism and confined for some weeksto his house, so that I don't think he enjoys it all very much."

  "An Uncle John's big property," the old woman went on--"Dick is to haveall dat, too, you tink?"

  "Yes, and Mary," answered Crawford. "Mary is a pretty little girl, andworth as much as all the property. Dick has managed to get around theold man, somehow, and if I can't stop it--"

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

  Egbert Crawford, Tombs lawyer, as has before been said, was much more inthe habit of putting others under close cross-examination, than allowinghimself to be subjected to the same sifting process. But whether he hadhis own motives for telling the old woman the truth, or whether he sawthat those coal black old eyes were looking through him and divining allthat he wished or intended--he certainly submitted to the question andtold 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 andone more glance into the coal black eyes. "I don't care if you know allabout it--you _daren't_ betray me, for your life!"

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

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

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

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

  What was it that Jeremy Taylor said--that old silver-tongued Bishop ofDown, Connor and Dromore, in Ireland?--"No disease cometh so much withour breath, drinking from the infected lips of others, as with thevessels of our own bodies that are ready to receive it." Shakspearesays 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 laughterover his odd conceits of "carrying peppermint to General Price" or"going to be measured for an umbrella," may doubt the truth of thisassertion; and Lester Wallack or Ned Sothern, when inspiring chucklesthat almost threaten the life, may share in the infidelity: but let allthese remember that their audiences _come_ to be amused, and that theirbest drolleries might fall very flat indeed at a Quaker meeting or in ahospital devoted to men with the jumping tooth-ache! The conditions ofCrime are like those of Disease and Mirth--the patient must be readybefore the inoculation can take place. Eve was unquestionably wishingfor a break in the already dull routine of her life in Eden, before theSerpent dared to make his appearance; and Arnold had some treasoncrudely floating through his mind, even if not that particular treason,before the overtures of the British commander led him to the attemptedbetrayal of the Key of the Highlands. Egbert Crawford, Tombs lawyer,when he said to Aunt Synchy, "What more could I do, I should like toknow?" meant to be understood as asserting that nothing more was in hispower; but there was really in his heart the wish for aid in some highercrime to effect his purposes; and the tempter came!

  "All dat goin' away from you, and nobody in de way but dat miserablechile!" was the only comment of the old woman on Crawford's lastquestion.

  "So I suppose," was the puzzled answer.

  "Why don't you have a good doctor for him, honey!" asked the old woman,next.

  "A good doctor?" queried Crawford, still more puzzled. "Why curse it,woman, what are you talking about? Won't he get well too soon, now, andperhaps be up at West Falls before I am more than half ready for him?"

  "Oh, you poor chile--you don't half understan' dis ole woman!" chuckledthe crone, delighted to find that she had puzzled the lawyer. "Spose degood doctor so good that he nebber get well? Eh, honey?"

  "What? poison?" broke out the lawyer, catching at the old woman'smeaning so suddenly that he could not quite control his voice.

  "Hush-h-h! you fool!" hissed the old woman, rising at once, hobbling tothe door and opening it suddenly--then closing it and returning to herchair. "You call yourself a lawyer, honey, and do such things as dat'are? Done you know dem policers are sneakin' aroun' ebberywhere, up destairways as well as ebberywhere else? An if one of dem happened to hearyou speak such words, dis ole woman take a ride up to de Islan' in deBlack Maria, and you go to de debbil, sure! Know all about 'em,honey--been dare afore!"

  "Humph!" said the lawyer, nevertheless using lower voice even for thedisclaimer. "No danger, Aunty, I guess! There are no policemennow-a-days--only Provost-Marshal Kennedy's spies, looking for tr
aitors.But what do you mean?--that I should get a doctor to--to--put him out ofthe way?"

  "Dats jes it, honey!" said the old woman, again rubbing her hands. "Heis in de way--put him out and have de ole man's money."

  "Impossible!" spoke Egbert Crawford, in a tone which would have told aclose observer--and probably told the old woman--that he only meant: "Ido not see how to do it."

  "Give um somefin," graphically said the crone.

  "What!" spoke the lawyer, almost in as loud a tone as he had beforeused, and rising from his chair in apparent indignation.

  "Sit down, honey," said the old woman, with the same sneer in her voicethat had before been apparent. "Oh, I know you is a good man andwouldn't do nuffin to hurt Cousin Dickey. Didn't kill his dog, nornuffin, did you, honey, a good wile ago, jes because you didn't like_him_. Don't do nuffin now, if you don't want to! Let him have de girl,an de ole man's money, an--"

  "Woman!" said Egbert Crawford, rising altogether this time, and pacingthe floor like a man a good deal unquieted. "I hate Dick Crawford, andyou know it. I want Uncle John's money and I want Mary, and he is in myway in both cases. You may as well know the whole truth--I hate himenough to 'put him out of the way,' as we have both called it, but thething is impossible. Any doctor to whom I should speak would have mearrested at once, for though they poison they do not wish to besuspected of such operations; and there is no other way. He will getwell and go up to West Falls, and then all is over!" and the lawyer sunkhis head on his breast as if he had been the most ill-used ofindividuals.

  "Not while your ole Aunty libs, Marser Egbert, if you dar do what shetells you!"

  The words struck some chord previously active in the brain of Crawford.He glanced up at the string of articles on the line of twine, thenstopped short in his walk, before the old woman.

  "Well?"

  "Oh, you see dem tings, and you is coming to it, is you, honey!"chuckled the crone. "You 'member what Aunt Synchy is, now?"

  "Yes, I remember," said Crawford, "though I forget the name. You are anO--Ogee--Odee--no, O--"

  "_An Obi woman!_" said the crone, rising and stretching herself to herfull height, with a look that was commanding in spite of her squalor."You 'member somefin, but not much. We be great people in Jamaica. Up inde hills 'bove Spanish Town, we are de kings and de queens. De great Obispirit come down to us, when de moon am at its last quarter, an he tellus how to cure and how to kill. We mix de charm at midnight, wid degreat Obi 'pearin' to us all de time in de smoke dat rises from dekettle, an de secret words all de time a mutterin'; and de charm works,an kills or cures 'way off hunerds of miles, 'cordin' as we want um forour friens or our enemies. Does you hear, honey?"

  "I hear!" said Egbert Crawford, for the moment absorbed if notfascinated by the developments of this real or affected superstition;but not carried away, it may be believed, from the influence which thishideous old woman might be able to exert on his own fortunes.

  "Mammy--you don't 'member ole Mammy?"--the old woman went on. "CaptainLewis brought Mammy an me from Jamaica more'n fifty years ago. She mus'have died when you was a little picanninny. She was de great Obi woman,de queen of dem all; and she tole me afore she died, so's I could domos' as much. Many's de lub potion Mammy an me has mixed up, dat hasmade some ob de wite bosoms fuller afore dey was done workin; and many'sde charm--"

  "Poh! nonsense! don't say 'charm'; call it 'dose'!" broke in the lawyer,at last impatient. "I believe you can kill, whether you can cure or not,Aunt Synchy; but I am a man, with some experience in the world, and Idon't believe in your Obi. All your dead cats and babies' hands andsnakes yonder, are just so many tricks to influence the superstitious._I_ know better, and they don't influence _me_!"

  "Oh, dey doesn't, eh, honey? You is too smart an don't believe in deObi?" For the moment her face was lowering and threatening--then itchanged again to the same wrinkled Sphynx as before. "Nebber mind--youis my boy, an I lubs you, an so you 'sult de ole woman widout de Obipayin' you for it! Call it 'dose,' then, honey--many's de dose dat desehans have mixed, dat has made de coffin-maker hab somefin to do and sentde property where it belonged."

  "I believe you!" was the laconic comment of Egbert Crawford, when thecrone, spite of his interruptions, had finished her long rigmarole. Whatfollowed may quite as well be imagined as described. Richard Crawfordwas doomed to be operated upon by one of those insidious and deadlyvegetable poisons, outwardly applied, in which none have such horribleskill as the crones of the African race who have derived their knowledgefrom the West India Islands. Whether it should be brought near the headby concealment in a pillow, or near the more vital portions of the bodyitself through use of a bandage worn near the skin,--the effect would bethe same--insensible debilitation, decline, death! But the latter planwould be much the more rapid; and in neither event, when the deed wasdone, would there be one mark, perceptible even to the dissectingsurgeon, telling that other than natural decay had brought aboutdissolution.

  Ten minutes afterwards, Aunt Synchy was busy compounding a _blackpaste_, from various preparations which she found among the vials on theshelf and under one corner of the heap of rags which she called herbed--crooning all the while a dismal attempt at a tune which made eventhe not-over-sensitive lawyer shudder, and putting the mixture at lastinto his hands with a "Lor' bress you, honey!" which might have made_any one_ shudder if he had understood the connection. Fifteen minuteslater, the Tombs lawyer left Thomas Street, without the information ofwhich he had originally come in search, but his mind now full of otherthings, and bearing in his mind the mental label of the prescription:"to be used as directed."

  So vice buds into crime whenever opportunity offers, and the Hazaels ofthe world, who have believed that they never could be brought to "dothis thing," pursue it with an energy and determination shaming theefforts of older offenders. Yesterday only an illicit lover: to-day thedestroyer of children unborn! Yesterday only an _ordinary_ scoundrel:to-day the worst and most deadly of all murderers--the _poisoner_!

  Three months later--to wit, toward the close of June--that state ofaffairs was existing at the house of Richard Crawford, which has beforebeen indicated. What was it, indeed, that Josephine Harris had dimlydiscovered?