"Hish-ish! I'll tell you if you will never tell. Oh, Lord, no, you mustn't indeed! You wouldn't, I know, 'cause it would ruin us! Listen--" "Now, Aunt Nancy, don't be letting me into any of your capital crimes and hanging secrets--don't, because I don't want to hear them, and I won't neither! I ain't used to such! and I'm afraid of them, too!" "'Fraid o' what? Nobody can prove it," answered Miss Nancy, a little incoherently. "You know what better than I do, Aunt Nancy; and let me tell you, you'd better be careful. The eyes of the community are upon you." "Let 'em prove it! Let 'em prove it! They ain't got no witnesses! Chizzle and the cat ain't no witnesses," said Miss Nancy, obscurely; "let 'em do their worse! I reckon I know something about law as well as they do! if I am a lone 'oman!" "They can procure your removal from office without proving anything against you except unpopularity." "That's Commodore Waugh's plan! the ugly, wicked, old buggaboo! 'Tain't such great shakes of an office neither, the dear knows!" "Never mind, Aunt Nancy, mend your ways, and maybe they'll not disturb you. And don't tell me any of your capital secrets, because I might be summoned as a witness against you, which would not be so agreeable to my feelings--yon understand! And now tell me, if you are absolutely certain that Miss Mayfield has had that fortune left her. But stop! don't tell me how you found it out!" "Well, yes, I am certain--sure, she has a great fortune left her. I have the positive proofs of it. And, moreover, nobody in this country don't know it but myself--and you. And now I tell you, don't hint the matter to a soul. Be spry! dress yourself up jam! and go a courting before anybody else finds it out!" "But that would scarcely be honorable either," demurred the doctor. "You're mighty particular! Yes, it would, too! Jest you listen to me! Now if so be we were to go and publish about Marian's fortune, we'd have a whole herd of fortune hunters, who don't care a cent for anything but fortune, running after and worrying the life out of her, and maybe one of them marrying of her, and spending of her money, and bringing of her to poverty, and breaking of her heart. Whereas, if we keep the secret of the estate to ourselves, you, who desarve her, because you 'counted her all the same when she was poor, and who'd take good care of her property, and her, too--would have her all to yourself, and nobody to interfere. Don't you see?" "Well, to be sure--when one looks at the thing in this light," deliberated the sorely-tempted lover. "Of course! And that's the only light to look at it in! Don't you see? Why, by gracious! it seems to me as if we were doing Marian the greatest favor." CHAPTER XX. AS A LAST RESORT.