elp this servant. These are all the persons who, on
ordinary occasions, have means of access to the interior of the house,
placed, as a matter of course, at their disposal.

Mr. Yatman has been in business for many years,--carrying on his affairs
prosperously enough to realize a handsome independence for a person in
his position. Unfortunately for himself, he endeavored to increase
the amount of his property by speculating. He ventured boldly in his
investments, luck went against him, and rather less than two years ago
he found himself a poor man again. All that was saved out of the wreck
of his property was the sum of two hundred pounds.

Although Mr. Yatman did his best to meet his altered circumstances, by
giving up many of the luxuries and comforts to which he and his wife had
been accustomed, he found it impossible to retrench so far as to allow
of putting by any money from the income produced by his shop. The
business has been declining of late years,--the cheap advertising
stationers having done it injury with the public. Consequently, up
to the last week, the only surplus property possessed by Mr. Yatman
consisted of the two hundred pounds which had been recovered from the
wreck of his fortune. This sum was placed as a deposit in a joint-stock
bank of the highest possible character.

Eight days ago, Mr. Yatman and his lodger, Mr. Jay, held a conversation
together on the subject of the commercial difficulties, which are
hampering trade in all directions at the present time. Mr. Jay (who
lives by supplying the newspapers with short paragraphs relating to
accidents, offences, and brief records of remarkable occurrences in
general,--who is, in short, what they call a penny-a-liner) told his
landlord that he had been in the city that day, and heard unfavorable
rumors on the subject of the joint-stock banks. The rumors to which he
alluded had already reached the ears of Mr. Yatman from other quarters;
and the confirmation of them by his lodger had such an effect on his
mind,--predisposed, as it was, to alarm, by the experience of his former
losses,--that he resolved to go at once to the bank and withdraw his
deposit. It was then getting on toward the end of the afternoon; and he
arrived just in time to receive his money before the bank closed.

He received the deposit in bank-notes of the following amounts:--one
fifty-pound note, three twenty-pound notes, six ten-pound notes, and six
five-pound notes. His object in