"The moment I said this," said the spirit, "I regretted it, for he grasped the money with my right hand, and holding it over the fire, which was blazing merrily in the grate, he said. 'My friend, I exact from you an oath that you will not return one penny of this sum to Mr. Baskins. If you refuse, I shall cast every one of these bank notes into that fire, nor shall I admit you once more to your form until the very ashes of those notes have disappeared into the air.' "Now what could I do under the circumstances, Toppleton?" asked the spirit earnestly. "Could I do anything but swear to what he asked?" "Yes," returned Hopkins, "you could. I don't believe so vile a creature as he could have distinguished between a bible and a city directory. I'd have taken the oath on the city directory." "Alas!" said the spirit sadly, and with such evident sincerity that it jostled the Aunt Sallie from the chair to the floor. "As I said to you before, I am only an enduring Briton where you have the inventive genius of the Yankee. I never thought of the substitution of the directory for the bible, and the consequent elimination of moral responsibility from the oath. I simply swore as he desired me to, and in an hour I was alone in my office, the occupant of a frame so exhausted that I could scarcely lift my head, and in my pockets were those miserable bank notes, more burning to my conscience than had they been sovereign for sovereign in gold coin hot from the mint." "Of course," suggested Hopkins, "you devoted them to the cause of charity; subscribed all but your just due to the House for Imbeciles, in which that wronged unfortunate the plaintiff was incarcerated?"