false
swearing."

"Oh yes, the thing is done every day."

"Ah, well, how is it done?"

"The process is very simple. Take your seven thousand dollars, and
make it a present to some friend, in whom you can confide. Then you
will be worth nothing, and go before the insolvent commissioners and
swear until you are black and blue, without perjuring yourself."

"Humph! is that the way it is done?" said Mr. Hardy.

"The very way."

"But suppose the friend should decline handing it back?"

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders as he replied, "You must take care
whom you trust in an affair of this kind. At worst, however, you
would be just as well off, assuming that your friend should hold on
to what you gave him, as you would be if you abandoned all to your
creditors."

"True, if I abandon all, there is no hope of, even getting back a
dollar. It is the same as if I had thrown every thing into the sea."

"Precisely."

"While, in adopting the plan you propose, the chances for getting
back my own again are eight to ten in my favour."

"Or, you might almost say, ten to ten. No friend into whose hands
you confided the little remnant of your property would be so base as
to withhold it from you."

"I will do it," said Mr. Hardy, as he parted with the lawyer.

One day, a few weeks after this interview took place, the client of
Mr. Dockett came hurriedly into his office, and, drawing him aside,
said, as he slipped a small package into his hand, "Here is
something for you. You remember our conversation a short time ago?"

"Oh, very well."

"You understand me, Mr. Dockett?"

"Oh, perfectly! all right; when do you go before the commissioners?"

"To-morrow."

"Ah?"

"Yes--good morning. I will see you again as soon as all is over."

"Very well--good morning."

On the next day, Mr. Hardy met before the commissioners, and took a
solemn oath that he had truly and honestly given up into the hands
of his assignee every dollar of his property, for the benefit of his
creditors, and that he did not now possess any thing beyond what the
law permitted him to retain. Upon this, the insolvent commissioners
gave him a full release from the claims that were held against him,
and Mr. Hardy was able to say, as far as the law was concerned, "I
owe no man any thing."

Mr. Dockett, the lawyer, was sitting in his office on the day after
his client had shuffled off his coil of debt, his mind intent upon
some legal mystery, when the latt