takes
more than is good for me? Does you say so, Mr. Bunce?"

"No, thank ye, no. How should I say what ain't true? You don't take half
enough, now, it's my idee, neither on you. It's all talk and no cider,
and that I call monstrous dry work. Come, pass round the bottle. Here's
to you, Master Tongs--Master Brooks, I drink your very good health. But
fill up, fill up--you ain't got nothing in your tumbler."

"No, he's a sneak--you're a sneak, Brooks, if you don't fill up to the
hub. Go the whole hog, boy, and don't twist your mouth as if the stuff
was physic. It's what I call nation good, now; no mistake in it, I tell
you."

"Hah! that's a true word--there's no mistake in this stuff. It is jest
now what I calls ginywine."

"True Monongahely, Master Bunce. Whoever reckoned to find a Yankee
pedler with a _raal_ good taste for Monongahely? Give us your fist, Mr.
Bunce; I see you know's what's what. You ain't been among us for
nothing. You've larned something by travelling; and, by dogs! you'll
come to be something yit, if you live long enough--if so be you can only
keep clear of the _old range_."

The pedler winced under the equivocal compliments of his companion, but
did not suffer anything of this description to interfere with the
vigorous prosecution of his design. He had the satisfaction to perceive
that Brooks had gradually accommodated himself not a little to the
element in which his brother-in-law, Tongs, was already floating
happily; and the boy, his son, already wore the features of one over
whose senses the strong liquor was momentarily obtaining the mastery.
But these signs did not persuade him into any relaxation of his labors;
on the contrary, encouraged by success, he plied the draughts more
frequently and freely than before, and with additional evidence of the
influence of the potation upon those who drank, when he found that he
was enabled, unperceived, to deposit the contents of his own tumbler, in
most instances, under the table around which they gathered. In the cloud
of smoke encircling them, and sent up from their several pipes, Bunce
could perceive the face of his colleague in the conspiracy peering in
occasionally upon the assembly, and at length, on some slight pretence,
he approached the aperture agreeably to the given signal, and received
from the hands of the landlord a vial containing a strong infusion of
opium, which he placed cautiously in his bosom, and awaited the moment
of more increased