, 'Come with me to my study.'

"I of course went. The first thing I saw upon entering was a trunk
locked and strapped. 'I am going to Europe to-morrow,' said he, 'to be
gone six months.'

"I was astonished, for in that town no one presumed to do anything of
importance without consulting his neighbors; but I merely bowed my
congratulations, and waited for him to speak, for I saw he had something
on his mind that he wished to say. At last it came out. He had a
daughter, he said, a daughter who had disgraced him and whom he had
forbidden his house. She was not worthy of his consideration, yet he
could not help but remember her, and while he never desired to see her
enter his doors, it was not his wish that she should suffer want. He had
a little money which he had laid by and which he wished to put into my
hands for her use, provided anything should happen to him during his
absence. 'She is a wanderer now,' he cried, 'but she may one day come
back, and then if I am dead and gone, you may give it to her.' I was not
to enter it in the bank under his name, but regard it as a personal
trust to be used only under such circumstances as he mentioned.

"The joy with which I listened to this proposal amounted almost to
ecstacy when he went to his desk and brought out five one thousand
dollar bills and laid them in my hand. 'It is not much,' said he, 'but
it will save her from worse degradation if she chooses to avail herself
of it.'

"Not much; oh no, not much, but just the sum that would raise me out of
the pit of despondency into which I had fallen, and give me my bride, a
chance in the world, and last, but not least, revenge on the rival I had
now learned to hate. I was obliged to give the colonel a paper
acknowledging the trust, but that was no hindrance. I did not mean to
use the money, only to show it; and long before the colonel could
return, my own five thousand would be in my hands--and so, and so, and
so, as the devil reasons and young infatuated ears listen.

"Colonel Japha thought I was an honest man, nor did I consider myself
otherwise at that time. It was a chance for clever action; a bit of
opportune luck that it would be madness to discard. On the day the
vessel sailed which carried Colonel Japha out of the country, I went to
Mr. Delafield and showed him the five crisp bank notes that represented
as it were by proxy, the fortune I so speedily expected to inherit. 'You
have wanted to see five thousand dollars in