f the Creator."

"Yes, that was something like it," mechanically and unintelligently
letting his eye fall now on his purchases.

"Pray, will you put your money in your belt to-night?"

"It's best, ain't it?" with a slight start. "Never too late to be
cautious. 'Beware of pick-pockets' is all over the boat."

"Yes, and it must have been the Son of Sirach, or some other morbid
cynic, who put them there. But that's not to the purpose. Since you are
minded to it, pray, sir, let me help you about the belt. I think that,
between us, we can make a secure thing of it."

"Oh no, no, no!" said the old man, not unperturbed, "no, no, I wouldn't
trouble you for the world," then, nervously folding up the belt, "and I
won't be so impolite as to do it for myself, before you, either. But,
now that I think of it," after a pause, carefully taking a little wad
from a remote corner of his vest pocket, "here are two bills they gave
me at St. Louis, yesterday. No doubt they are all right; but just to
pass time, I'll compare them with the Detector here. Blessed boy to make
me such a present. Public benefactor, that little boy!"

Laying the Detector square before him on the table, he then, with
something of the air of an officer bringing by the collar a brace of
culprits to the bar, placed the two bills opposite the Detector, upon
which, the examination began, lasting some time, prosecuted with no
small research and vigilance, the forefinger of the right hand proving
of lawyer-like efficacy in tracing out and pointing the evidence,
whichever way it might go.

After watching him a while, the cosmopolitan said in a formal voice,
"Well, what say you, Mr. Foreman; guilty, or not guilty?--Not guilty,
ain't it?"

"I don't know, I don't know," returned the old man, perplexed, "there's
so many marks of all sorts to go by, it makes it a kind of uncertain.
Here, now, is this bill," touching one, "it looks to be a three dollar
bill on the Vicksburgh Trust and Insurance Banking Company. Well, the
Detector says----"

"But why, in this case, care what it says? Trust and Insurance! What
more would you have?"

"No; but the Detector says, among fifty other things, that, if a good
bill, it must have, thickened here and there into the substance of the
paper, little wavy spots of red; and it says they must have a kind of
silky feel, being made by the lint of a red silk handkerchief stirred up
in the paper-maker's vat--the paper being made to order for