f home manufacture so
that through the red tape routine of the bank millions of sovereigns
would be ground out into our pockets.

Taking my deposit book and the genuine bills, I went to the bank and
left the bills for discount. This was at once done and the amount placed
to my credit. I drew L10,000, and that night found me once more one of
500 unfortunates paying tribute to Neptune. This time I landed at Ostend
and took the train for Amsterdam. There I repeated the Paris operation,
securing L10,000 in genuine bills. I returned to London, and as before
left them for acceptance. Then my companion manufactured a lot of
imitations and put them away with those previously manufactured, to be
all ready when the day came to use them. The genuine bills were then
discounted. Again and again I went to the Continent, repeating the
operation, until at last my credit at the bank was firm as a rock, and
we were ready to reap our harvest. But these operations, simple as they
seem, lasted over a period of six months, and had been made at heavy
cost. Our ordinary living expenses were not less than $25 a day for the
three, while our extraordinary expenses were enormous. I probably
traveled 10,000 miles over the Continent in my bill-buying expeditions
to Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfort and Vienna.

Another source of expense was the commissions paid to brokers for buying
bills on the exchange. Then we had many expenses purely personal, and,
enormous as it seems, the sum total from the day of our return from
Brazil until the day of our operations against the bank began to bring
us in cash were quite $500 a week, so that we had invested $15,000 in
preparation, not to speak of our hard work--and it was hard work, and
trying, too, for there were a multitude of details to be worked out.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE EGYPTIANS PASS OVER THE RED SEA AND THE HEBREWS ARE DROWNED THEREIN.

All the details of events leading through the long Summer and Autumn
days of 1872 up to the hour when the golden shower began to fall on us
are of intense, almost dramatic, interest. I will not, however, lengthen
the narrative by giving here any further account of them, but will
merely relate the story of the last five days before the actual
presentation of our home-brewed acceptances.

The bank had been discounting for weeks comparatively large sums for me.
Many thousand pounds of the genuine article discounted had matured and
been paid, and more thousands were st