making line was a clever one.
He managed to possess himself of a carrier-pigeon of the Antwerp breed,
one among a flock kept for stock-jobbing purposes, by a certain great
capitalist; and he contrived that this trained bird should wheel down
among the merchants just at noon one fine day in the Royal Exchange. The
billet under its wing contained certain cabalistic characters, and the
plain-spoken intelligence, "_Louis Philippe est mort!_" In a minute
after these most revolutionizing news, French funds, then at one hundred
and twelve, were toppling down below ninety, and our prudent John was
buying stock in all directions: nay, he even made some considerable
bargains at eighty-seven. There was a complete panic in the market, and
wretched was the man who possessed French fives. The afternoon's work so
beautifully finished, John spent that night as true-born Britons are
reported to have done before the battle of Hastings, rioting in drunken
bliss, and panting for the morrow; and when the morrow came, and the
Paris post with it, I must leave it to be understood with what
complacency of triumph our enterprising stock-jobber hastened to sell
again at one hundred and fourteen, pocketing, in the aggregate, a
difference of several thousand pounds. It was a feat altogether to
ravish a delighted father's heart, and no wonder that he counted John so
great a comfort.

Trick number two had been at once even more lucrative and more
dangerous. As a stock-broker, this enterprising Mr. Dillaway had
peculiar opportunities of investigating closely certain records in the
office for unclaimed dividends: he had an object in such close
inspection, and discovered soon that one Mrs. Jane Mackenzie, of
Ballyriggan, near Belfast, was a considerable proprietor, and had made
no claim for years. Why should so much money lie idle? Was the woman
dead? Probably not; for in that case executors or administrators would
have touched it. Legatees and next of kin are little apt to forget such
matters. Well, then, if this Mrs. Jane Mackenzie is alive, she must be a
careless old fool, and we'll try if we can't kill her on paper, and so
come in for spoils instead of kith and kin. "Shrewd Jack," as they
called him in the Alley, chuckled within himself at so feasible a plot.

Accordingly, in an artful and well-concocted way, which we may readily
conceive, but it were weary to detail, John Dillaway managed to forge a
will of Jane Mackenzie aforesaid; and inducing s