ived his instructions.
Nothing but an immediate countermand on my part, will prevent the
communication of which you speak, from going to Mr. Stuyvesant at seven
o'clock."

The sigh which rose in Mr. Sylvester's breast did not disturb the severe
immobility of his lip. "Have you ever considered the possibility," said
he, "of the man whom you overheard talking in the restaurant in Dey
Street two years ago, not being Mr. Bertram Sylvester of the Madison
Bank?"

"No," returned the other, with a short, sharp, and wholly undisturbed
laugh, "I do not think I ever have."

"Will you give me credit, then, for speaking with reason, when I declare
to you that the man you overheard talking in the manner you profess to
describe in your communication, was not Mr. Bertram Sylvester?"

A shrug of the shoulders, highly foreign and suggestive, was the other's
answer. "It was Mr. Sylvester or it was the devil," proclaimed he--"with
all deference to your reason, my good sir; or why are you here?" he
keenly added.

Mr. Sylvester did not reply. With a sarcastic twitch of his lips the man
took up the nickle with which he had been amusing himself when the
former came in, and set it spinning again upon the table. "It is
half-past six," remarked he. "It will take me a good half hour to go to
my lawyer."

Mr. Sylvester made a final effort. "If you could be convinced," said he,
"that you have got your grasp upon the wrong man, would you still
persist in the course upon which you seem determined?"

With a dexterous sleight-of-hand movement, the man picked up the
whirling nickle and laid it flat on the table before him. "A fellow
whose whole fortune is represented by a coin like that"--tapping the
piece significantly--"is not as easily convinced as a man of your means,
perhaps. But if I should be brought to own that I had made a mistake in
my man, I should still feel myself justified in proceeding against him,
since my very accusation of him seems to be enough to arouse such
interest on the part of his friends."

"Wretch!" leaped to Mr. Sylvester's lips, but he did not speak it. "His
friends," declared he, "have most certainly a great interest in his
reputation and his happiness; but they never will pay any thing upon
coercion to preserve the one or to insure the other."

"They won't!" And for the first time Roger Holt slightly quavered.

"A man's honor and happiness are much, and he will struggle long before
he will consent to part fro