The old lady threw up her hands, and John Cross, to whom this
intelligence was wholly new, inquired with a sort of awe-struck
gravity--

"Can this be true, Alfred Stevens? Is this possible?"

"The fact, sir. They go by no other name among themselves; and
you may suppose, if they are not ashamed of the name, they are not
unwilling to perform the doings of the devil. Indeed, they are busy
doing his business from morning to night--and night to morning.
They don't stop for the sabbath. They work on Sunday the same as
any other day, and if they take any rest at all it is on Saturday,
which would show them to be a kind of Jews."

"Good Lord deliver us!" ejaculated the widow.

"Where, O! where?" exclaimed the Brother Cross with similar earnestness.
The game was too pleasant for Alfred Stevens. He pursued it.

"In such cities," he continued, "as New York and Philadelphia,
thousands of these persons are kept in constant employ sending
forth those books of falsehood and folly which fill the hearts of
the young with vain imaginings, and mislead the footsteps of the
unwary. In one of these establishments, four persons preside, who
are considered brothers; but they are brothers in sin only, and
are by some supposed to be no other. They have called themselves
after the names of saints and holy men; even the names of the
thrice blessed apostles, John and James, have been in this fashion
abused; but if it be true that the spirits of evil may even in