"I believe you!" was the laconic comment of Egbert Crawford, when the crone, spite of his interruptions, had finished her long rigmarole. What followed may quite as well be imagined as described. Richard Crawford was doomed to be operated upon by one of those insidious and deadly vegetable poisons, outwardly applied, in which none have such horrible skill as the crones of the African race who have derived their knowledge from the West India Islands. Whether it should be brought near the head by concealment in a pillow, or near the more vital portions of the body itself through use of a bandage worn near the skin,--the effect would be the same--insensible debilitation, decline, death! But the latter plan would be much the more rapid; and in neither event, when the deed was done, would there be one mark, perceptible even to the dissecting surgeon, telling that other than natural decay had brought about dissolution. Ten minutes afterwards, Aunt Synchy was busy compounding a _black paste_, from various preparations which she found among the vials on the shelf and under one corner of the heap of rags which she called her bed--crooning all the while a dismal attempt at a tune which made even the not-over-sensitive lawyer shudder, and putting the mixture at last into his hands with a "Lor' bress you, honey!" which might have made _any one_ shudder if he had understood the connection. Fifteen minutes later, the Tombs lawyer left Thomas Street, without the information of which he had originally come in search, but his mind now full of other things, 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 of the world, who have believed that they never could be brought to "do this thing," pursue it with an energy and determination shaming the efforts of older offenders. Yesterday only an illicit lover: to-day the destroyer 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 of affairs was existing at the house of Richard Crawford, which has before been indicated. What was it, indeed, that Josephine Harris had dimly discovered? CHAPTER VIII. THE TWO RIVALS AT JUDGE OWEN'S--A COMBAT A LA OUTRANCE BETWEEN THE BANCKER AND THE WALLACE--ALMOST A CHALLENGE, AND A TRIAL OF EVERY-DAY COURAGE. Return we now to the somewhat too-long neglected Miss Emily Owen and the other inmates and intimates of Judge Owen's pleasant house near the Harlem River.