"Hey day, sir!" said she, in a grating voice, "and what now? Oh! Mr. Summers, is it you? You're welcome, sir! I wishes I could offer you a glass of summut, but the bottle's dry--he! he!" pointing, with a revolting grin, to an empty bottle that stood on a niche within the hearth. "I don't know how it is, sir, but I never wants to eat; but ah! 't is the liquor that does un good!" "You have lived a long time in this house?" said the curate. "A long time,--some thirty years an' more." "You remember your lodger, Mr. Aram?" "A--well--yes!" "An excellent man--" "Humph." "A most admirable man!" "A-humph! he!--humph! that's neither here nor there." "Why, you don't seem to think as all the rest of the world does with regard to him?" "I knows what I knows." "Ah! by the by, you have some cock-and-a-bull story about him, I fancy, but you never could explain yourself,--it is merely for the love of seeming wise that you invented it, eh, Goody?" The old woman shook her head, and crossing her hands on her knee, replied with peculiar emphasis, but in a very low and whispered voice, "I could hang him!" "Pooh!" "Tell you I could!" "Well, let's have the story then!" "No, no! I have not told it to ne'er a one yet, and I won't for nothing. What will you give me? Make it worth my while." "Tell us all, honestly, fairly, and fully, and you shall have five golden guineas. There, Goody." Roused by this promise, the dame looked up with more of energy than she had yet shown, and muttered to herself, rocking her chair to and fro: "Aha! why not? No fear now, both gone; can't now murder the poor old cretur, as the wretch once threatened. Five golden guineas,--five, did you say, sir, five?" "Ah! and perhaps our bounty may not stop there," said the curate. Still the old woman hesitated, and still she muttered to herself; but after some further prelude, and some further enticement from the curate, the which we spare our reader, she came at length to the following narration:--