hangers, he could procure a hundred twenty-three and
three-fourths. In short, this man's coffers were supplied by the despair
of honest men and the stratagems of rogues. I did not immediately
suspect how this man's prudence and indefatigable attention to his own
interest should allow him to become the dupe of Welbeck.

"What," said I, "is old Thetford's claim upon Welbeck?"

"It is a claim," he replied, "that, if it ever be made good, will doom
Welbeck to imprisonment and wholesome labour for life."

"How? Surely it is nothing more than debt."

"Have you not heard? But that is no wonder. Happily you are a stranger
to mercantile anxieties and revolutions. Your fortune does not rest on a
basis which an untoward blast may sweep away, or four strokes of a pen
may demolish. That hoary dealer in suspicions was persuaded to put his
hand to three notes for eight hundred dollars each. The _eight_ was then
dexterously prolonged to eigh_teen_; they were duly deposited in time
and place, and the next day Welbeck was credited for fifty-three hundred
and seventy-three, which, an hour after, were _told out_ to his
messenger. Hard to say whether the old man's grief, shame, or rage, be
uppermost. He disdains all comfort but revenge, and that he will procure
at any price. Jamieson, who deals in the same _stuff_ with Thetford, was
outwitted in the same manner, to the same amount, and on the same day.

"This Welbeck must have powers above the common rate of mortals. Grown
gray in studying the follies and the stratagems of men, these veterans
were overreached. No one pities them. 'Twere well if his artifices had
been limited to such, and he had spared the honest and the poor. It is
for his injuries to men who have earned their scanty subsistence without
forfeiting their probity, that I hate him, and shall exult to see him
suffer all the rigours of the law." Here Wortley's engagements compelled
him to take his leave.

CHAPTER XXV.

While musing upon these facts, I could not but reflect with astonishment
on the narrow escapes which Mervyn's virtue had experienced. I was by no
means certain that his fame or his life was exempt from all danger, or
that the suspicions which had already been formed respecting him could
possibly be wiped away. Nothing but his own narrative, repeated with
that simple but nervous eloquence which we had witnessed, could rescue
him from the most heinous charges. Was there any tribunal that would not
acq