s! The confusion and
prevarication of the wretch, who made vain and frantic attempts to recover
the property, betrayed his guilt, and he was immediately taken into
custody, together with his companion, who, following at a very short
distance, was unhesitatingly pointed out by his cowardly and bewildered
confederate as the owner of the money. No time was lost in conveying
intelligence of their capture to their unfortunate victim, who immediately
identified the notes as his own property, and at the first view of the
assassins swore distinctly to the persons of both--to the elder, as having
repeatedly stabbed him; and to the younger, as his companion and
coadjutor.

The criminals were in due course of time tried, fully convicted, and, as
was to be expected, sentenced to death by the guillotine; but, owing to
some technical informality in the proceedings, the doom of the law could
not be carried into execution until the sentence of the court had been
confirmed upon appeal. This delay afforded time and opportunity for some
meddling or interested individual--either moved by the desire of making a
cruel experiment, or else by the hope of obtaining a reversal of the
capital sentence against the prisoners--to work upon the feelings of the
unfortunate money-changer. A few days after the sentence of death had been
pronounced, the unhappy victim received a letter from an unknown hand,
mysteriously worded, and setting forth, in expressions that seemed to him
fearfully prophetic, that the thread of his own destiny was indissolubly
united with that of his condemned assassins. It was evidently out of their
power to take away _his_ life; and it was equally out of his power to
survive _them_, die by the sentence of the law, or how or when they might;
it became clear--so argued this intermeddler--that the same moment which saw
the termination of their lives, would inevitably be the last of his own.
To fortify his arguments, the letter-writer referred to certain mystic
symbols in the heavens. Now though the poor man could understand nothing
of the trumpery diagrams which were set forth as illustrating the truth of
the fatal warning thus conveyed to him, and though his friends universally
laughed at the trick as a barefaced attempt of some anonymous impostor to
rob justice of her due, it nevertheless made a deep impression upon his
mind. Ignorant of every thing but what related immediately to his own
money-getting profession, he had a blind