Next Door Neighbours.

A REMINISCENCE OF THE AMERICAN BAR,

BY EDWIN JAMES.

ONE of New York's most sultry days was succeeded by an oppressive stifling evening. The corridors of the Fifth Avenue Hotel were crowded. Travellers from the various states, speculators from the city, politicians from the wards, lobbyists from Albany, real estate brokers, lawyers and their clients, merchants and buyers, thronged the gorgeous and attractive "bars," and lounged listlessly along the marble passages of the great hostelry.

Awaiting with evident anxiety the arrival of some friend, a short spare man was pacing the great entrance, the doors of which were thrown open to admit the little air which circulated through the building. A restless wandering eye and a hurried step betokened that some anxious business had brought him there and occupied his thoughts. He seemed to avoid the gaze of every new comer who entered the hotel and passed along the corridor; and every now and then concealed his short figure behind the mountains of baggage which were ranged on either side of the spacious hall. His track was indicated by innumerable pieces of paper torn by nervous hands and bitten by nervous teeth into the smallest possible fragments, thrown down then gathered up, then jerked away again; and he stood behind a gigantic Saratoga trunk, took papers from the breast-pocket of his coat, looked at them, and replaced them, and tore some of them into shreds; then walked to the door, and looked eagerly and anxiously down Broadway, and returned to the corridor.

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"Halloa! Phere ?" in a loud, coarse authoritative tone, and, suiting the action to the word, the speaker administered a smart rap upon the shoulder of the little man. "Are you among us again ?" said a tall red-haired man, dressed in the height of New York fashion. "I didn't expect you here for some time yet. I guess you feel kinder strange, eh?"

"Yes; I am here," said the little man, as he shrank convulsively from contact with one of the most acute and successful detectives of New York; "I am here," he replied, " and no thanks to you"; and the detective vanished into the noisy crowd, and the little man retired once more behind the mountain of boxes, and took more papers from his pocket, and examined them under the light of the gas, and selected some, and placed them carefully in the lining of his hat-lighted a

cigar, and with an air of assumed nonchalance, again paced the corridor, in front of the entrance to the hotel.

As the light shone upon him, the novelty of his apparel was remarkable. Everything was new; an entire suit of black kerseymere almost glittered "in its newest gloss," the polished boots were new-the gloves had not left the store in Broadway many hours, the hat a very recent purchase-covered a head from which the hair had been cut so closely as to suggest the idea that it had been reaped or mown by some kind of machinery-and a very white tie, equally new, completed his toilette.

"Why, Mac, you are late. I have been waiting here nearly an hour," said the small man, almost in a whisper, as he approached a man, tall and of gentlemanlike mien and bearing, who was hurriedly passing up the central entrance.

Yes, I am late. Where shall we go?" said the newly-arrived friend. "We must be on the quiet here. Stop here, and I will join you in a minute." Saying which, the tall man retired into the lavatory, and returned without the plentiful brown beard and whiskers he wore upon his entrance, and with the addition of a pair of gold spectacles. "Now," said he, "let us have a drink, and then we will discuss our business." And they went to the bar, and disappeared amongst the giddy crowd that invariably surround that attractive section of the establishment.

At a small table in one of the most remote corners of the large room which stockbrokers appropriate to their evening speculations at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, sat the two men who had made their rendezvous there upon this occasion.

They were remarkable men. Mac," as his friend familiarly called him, had been educated for commercial pursuits, and more highly educated than is usual for the sons of even the wealthiest American merchants. He had travelled in every country in Europe; spoke fluently and wrote with facility German, Italian, and French. His manner was singularly prepossessing, his demeanour inspired confidence; a cold and studied reserve disarmed suspicion, and lent an appearance of innocence which verged upon simplicity, to his conversation upon any subject in which he took an interest. He had dissipated at the faro table the results of more than one reckless but successful speculation, and had there formed associations and contracted habits which grow like fungi from the ruins of lost fortune and blighted character. His own hand had not yet actually simulated a signature; but he had bought and paid for the engraving of forged bills of credit, and had successfully circulated them with European bankers; and at the time when the two were conversing, had the proceeds of the last enterprise, to the extent of fifty thousand dollars, deposited in a bank in Canada, to his credit. He was known by every

detective in New York; his skill baffled them and his audacity defied them; he lounged into the banks, and bought small bills upon Europe; he strolled into the offices of brokers, and gave orders for the purchase of stocks; he might be seen at Delmonico's, taking his luncheon with more than one cashier of a bank who drove fast horses and gailydressed women in the Central Park. He drew his drafts upon Canadian banks to establish a credit, and kept just now a considerable sum on deposit in one of the most extensive and accommodating banks in the City. He had been suspected, and very cogently suspected, of habitually purchasing stolen United States bonds; but his transactions were so adroitly effected, and the securities had passed through the hands of so many innocent holders, that the proof of guilty knowledge failed, and he had thus eluded more than one attempt to arrest him. He kept a mistress in the most fashionable quarter of the City; she bought and paid for her diamonds at Tiffany's, which he hypothecated for their full value with the obliging cashier who drove the fast horses and the gaily dressed woman in the Park. He played faro at Chamberlain's every night, and more than once had broken the bank.

The little man with the angular features, thin compressed lips, and restless eye, sat opposite. He was the most skilled forger in the United States. No one could raise' a cheque drawn and signed for twenty-five dollars to twenty-five thousand, with the same facility -and if the genuine signature could not be made available, no one could counterfeit it with the same dexterity. Great success had attended his operations in many of the largest cities-he grew bold and reckless-and, presenting a forged cheque for a large amount in one of the Western states, upon a bank where the merchant whose name was counterfeited had not by a mere accident sufficient assets at the moment to meet it, inquiry was instituted, which led to his apprehension and conviction, and a sentence of fifteen years imprisonment. Influence, political and pecuniary, had procured a remission of the sentence after five years' imprisonment; and he had hurried on to New York, where he arrived but a few days previously, to lay new plans of plunder and devise new schemes of fraud.

They had been introduced to each other at the supper-table of a well-known gambling house in Twenty-third Street; the reputation of the little man stood high in adventurous circles in New York for cool collected daring and for loyalty and fidelity to his co-adventurers; while Mac was known to possess the attributes of manner and deportment, invaluable in commercial raids, and a banker's account, which he was ready to embark in any venture where he deemed success to be reasonably probable. Mac had communicated at this meeting to the little man a scheme which had for some time engrossed his attention, but the room was crowded, and the discussion was by mutual consent

adjourned to the following evening, when they were to meet at Delmonico's.

In a basement in the lower part of Wall Street, an elderly gentleman carried on the business of a broker and dealer in bonds and other securities. He was reputed to be more than a millionaire. His office consisted of but one room-his establishment of one confidential clerk. His pecuniary transactions were extensive; his credit unlimited; his word would be taken on the market for a million. For fifty years he had occupied the same room, for half a century or more he had been seen every morning wending his way to Wall Street before nine o'clock, and returning late in the evening to a small substantial-looking building in an unfrequented part of the City. He had no thought but the acquisition of wealth; he sat poring over his bonds and his securities from morn till night; his desk, his altar; his ledger, his Bible; his money, his God.

If a large amount of securities for an immediate investment was required, they were obtainable at Mr. L's office; he collected them from the various banks where they were deposited for safe custody, and at a few hours' notice they were ready for delivery to a purchaser. For a quarter of a century Ezra Talman had been his confidential clerk. He came from the same village in the State of Connecticut that claimed the nativity of his employer; and by faithful and zealous service had earned, and justly earned, the confidence unreservedly placed in him. He kept the books, drew and signed cheques, and conducted negotiations and loans upon securities to an unlimited extent.

In an unlucky hour, Ezra Talman had been tempted to speculate, and had lost beyond his power of reclaiming. He had appropriated cash balances which should have been paid into his employer's bank; in the hope of recovering himself, he had made fictitious entries in his books, and thus postponed from day to day detection. But it must come, as inevitably as death. It must come.

"Better be with the dead

Than on the torture of the mind to lie-
In restless ecstasy;"

and every hour of his existence was clouded with the dread of exposure, of ruin, and irretrievable disgrace. To one only had he communicated his fearful position: to the wife who had shared his early struggles, who had made a life of dull monotony cheerful and happy, whose frugality and self-sacrifice had provided some store for the evening of their lives; to her alone had he confessed his error, and confided the misery that was eating into his very soul. Told by his own lips, she refused to believe it; she would not believe that a life of rectitude and integrity could be thus forfeited; that all the years he

had toiled with steadfast purpose to gain reputation and honour were lost for ever; and that the temptation of sudden and unearned wealth had shattered in an hour every prospect and every hope.

But not a word of reproach found a place in the heart, or came from the lips of the noble woman. Her memory recalled the years they had passed together. She sat statue-like upon the sofa, and with fixed and vacant eye followed the form of the agonised man as he paced the room; in the depth of her despair the only words she uttered-she did not utter them, they passed her lips involuntarilywere, "Great God! Ezra, is this possible?" No tears came to her relief; no hysteria lent its convulsive aid to assuage the grief-stricken brain. As from the effect of an irritant poison, her throat and tongue and lips were scorched and constricted. She sat motionless; intense grief, like sudden terror, paralyses the sufferer. Niobe was all tears. Marie-Antoinette could not shed one. Nerving herself to the effort, she rose after a few minutes from the sofa, and almost reeled across the room to where her husband stood, unconscious of her approach. "It is your time to go to your office; you must be there as usual; leave all to me," she whispered into the ear of the abject and irresolute man; led him to the hall; brushed his hat; assisted him to put on his coat; almost thrust him into the street; and as she closed the door after him, "God help us!" was the parting cry she uttered; he faintly heard it-faint as it was, he heard it all that day -heard it at his desk; heard it far and above the voices of the busy crowd that surrounded him in his office and on Change; heard it as the echo of an angel's solace wafted to the ear of a dying penitent.

"Yes, it shall all go-house, home, furniture-every article my own. hands have fashioned, every gift that esteem has made, every tribute that friendship has offered, it shall all go to save him. But will it save him?" Thus the wife soliloquised. "He told me his defalcation was large, but he had not the courage to tell me the extent. What cowards men are when they stand before the tribunal of an innocent woman they have wronged and their own conscience is their prosecutor! But I will not upbraid him. I will save him. My duty to him demands it, if my affection does not prompt it. I must and I will save him!" And she walked through every room of their little snugly-furnished house, which had been purchased and invested in her name, and formed some estimate of what could be realised by an immediate and forced sale of the house and its contents.

"But this will not be sufficient," she said. "I must do more, and I will do more."

She was the only daughter of a farmer in the State of Connecticut. Her aged father lived in the little homestead he had secured by a long life of parsimony and toil-the homestead so sacred on American soil, the sanctuary for age, the refuge for the widow and the orphan. It had