ing dishes, and left me to draw my
own conclusion.

"Uncle, there are crises in life which no former experience teaches you
how to meet. I had arrived at such a one. Perhaps you can understand me
when I say I was well nigh appalled. Denial of what was imputed to me
might be wisdom and might not. I felt the coil of a deadly serpent about
me, and knew not whether it was best to struggle or to simply submit.
The man noted the effect he had made and complacently folded his arms.
He was of a nervous organization and possessed an eye like a hungry
wolf, but he could wait. 'This is a pretty story,' said I at last, and I
reject it altogether. 'I am an honest man and have always been so; you
will have to give up your hopes of making anything out of me.' 'Then you
are willing,' said he, 'that I should repeat this story to one of the
directors of your bank, whom I know?'

"I looked at him; he returned my gaze with a cold nonchalence more
suggestive of a deep laid purpose, than even his previous glance of
feverish determination. I immediately let my eye run over his scanty
clothing and loose flowing hair and beard. 'Yes,' said I, with as much
sarcasm as I knew how to assume, 'if you dare risk the consequences, I
think I may.' He at once drew himself up. 'You think,' said he, 'that
you have a common-place adventurer to deal with; that my appearance is
going to testify in your favor; that you have but to deny any accusation
which such a hungry-looking, tattered wretch as I, may make, and that I
shall be ignominiously kicked out of the presence into which I have
forced myself; that in short I have been building my castle in the air.
Mr. Sylvester, I am a poor devil but I am no fool. When I left Dey
Street on the twenty-fifth of February two years ago, it was with a
sealed paper in my pocket, in which was inscribed all that I had heard
on that day. This I took to a lawyer's office, and not being, as I have
before said, quite as impecunious in those days as at present, succeeded
in getting the lawyer, whom I took care should be a most respectable
man, to draw up a paper to the effect that I had entrusted him with this
statement--of whose contents he however knew nothing--on such a day and
hour, to which paper a gentleman then present, consented at my
respectful solicitation to affix his name as witness, which gentleman,
strange to say, has since proved to be a director of the bank of which
you are the present cashier, and consequently