wn, and the wrinkles the wrong way for
smiling. I could not tell what the Captain answered, for the door banged
on them, and it woke the baby, who was dreaming, perhaps, about his
lordship's face, and his little teeth gave him the wind on his chest,
and his lungs was like bellows--bless him!

"Well, that stopped me, Miss Erema, from being truly accurate in my
testimony. What with walking the floor, and thumping his back, and
rattling of the rings to please him--when they put me on the Testament,
cruel as they did, with the lawyers' eyes eating into me, and both my
ears buzzing with sorrow and fright, I may have gone too far, with my
heart in my mouth, for my mind to keep out of contradiction, wishful as
I was to tell the whole truth in a manner to hurt nobody. And without
any single lie or glaze of mine, I do assure you, miss, that I did more
harm than good; every body in the room--a court they called it, and no
bigger than my best parlor--one and all they were convinced that I would
swear black was white to save my master and mistress! And certainly I
would have done so, and the Lord in heaven thought the better of me, for
the sake of all they children, if I could have made it stick together,
as they do with practice."

At thought of the little good she had done, and perhaps the great
mischief, through excess of zeal, Mrs. Strouss was obliged to stop, and
put her hand to her side, and sigh. And eager as I was for every word
of this miserable tale, no selfish eagerness could deny her need of
refreshment, and even of rest; for her round cheeks were white, and her
full breast trembled. And now she was beginning to make snatches at my
hand, as if she saw things she could only tell thus.

CHAPTER XXIV

BETSY'S TALE--(Continued.)

"I am only astonished, my dear," said my nurse, as soon as she had had
some tea and toast, and scarcely the soft roe of a red herring, "that
you can put up so well, and abide with my instincts in the way you
do. None of your family could have done it, to my knowledge of their
dispositions, much less the baby that was next above you. But it often
comes about to go in turns like that; 'one, three, five, and seven is
sweet, while two, four, and six is a-squalling with their feet.' But
the Lord forgive me for an ill word of them, with their precious little
bodies washed, and laying in their patterns till the judgment-day.

"But putting by the words I said in the dirty little room they pleas