nth, but she was still suspicious, fearing some trick, and she
remained a long time with the lawyer asking questions without being able
to make up her mind to go. At last she gave him instructions to draw up
the deed and returned home with her head in a whirl, just as if she had
drunk four jugs of new cider.

When Chicot came again to receive her answer she declared, after a lot of
persuading, that she could not make up her mind to agree to his proposal,
though she was all the time trembling lest he should not consent to give
the fifty crowns, but at last, when he grew urgent, she told him what she
expected for her farm.

He looked surprised and disappointed and refused.

Then, in order to convince him, she began to talk about the probable
duration of her life.

"I am certainly not likely to live more than five or six years longer. I
am nearly seventy-three, and far from strong, even considering my age.
The other evening I thought I was going to die, and could hardly manage
to crawl into bed."

But Chicot was not going to be taken in.

"Come, come, old lady, you are as strong as the church tower, and will
live till you are a hundred at least; you will no doubt see me put under
ground first."

The whole day was spent in discussing the money, and as the old woman
would not give in, the innkeeper consented to give the fifty crowns, and
she insisted upon having ten crowns over and above to strike the bargain.

Three years passed and the old dame did not seem to have grown a day
older. Chicot was in despair, and it seemed to him as if he had been
paying that annuity for fifty years, that he had been taken in, done,
ruined. From time to time he went to see the old lady, just as one goes
in July to see when the harvest is likely to begin. She always met him
with a cunning look, and one might have supposed that she was
congratulating herself on the trick she had played him. Seeing how well
and hearty she seemed he very soon got into his buggy again, growling to
himself:

"Will you never die, you old hag?"

He did not know what to do, and he felt inclined to strangle her when he
saw her. He hated her with a ferocious, cunning hatred, the hatred of a
peasant who has been robbed, and began to cast about for some means of
getting rid of her.

One day he came to see her again, rubbing his hands as he did the first
time he proposed the bargain, and, after having chatted for a few
minutes, he said:

"Why do you never c