'I am deeply involved in my business, and was, at the moment of your coming, watching for the messenger that would bring me notice of the refusal of my creditors to accord me any farther extension of time. Ill news flies fast. I have already heard it, but have received no official notification.'

'And is that all?' said Cloyden, releasing the trembling hand of his friend. All! all! Is ruin staring me in the face nothing?'

'Nothing! Of course it is nothing. Thank heaven, you cannot be sold into the mines, Allen, for failing to pay your debts, as you might be under my good patron the Emperor of Brazil; nor yet shut up among thieves and murderers, as you might be among some equally polished people.'

'No; but I can taste poverty and scorn, the nearest of kin to death,' was the response.

'And I, as your father-confessor, my good friend, can tell you how to avoid both these, and place yourself in ease and comfort; but I will only show you on one condition.'

'And that is

'That you shall never confide the means to any person else, not even to that flaxen-haired wife and daughter above-stairs. Is it a bargain?'

Once more the friends clasped hands, and Cloyden led the other towards a table, while he drew from his pocket a small leather case.

'Here I have the method all drawn up in clerkly form. These slips of paper have a strange meaning, Allen. You perceive they are printed, with no written words about them but my own name at the bottom. Accept a few of them, my old friend; you will find them a

sovereign balm for all your troubles. Some people call them bank-checks for blank amounts; you may call them what you please.'

The checks lay untouched upon the table, while Mr. Allen Conroy stared speechlessly at Cloyden. The tears gathering fast in his eyes, and dropping away from them, said more than his tongue could have uttered.

'Well, what now, Conroy? You're not going to work up a scene, are you, and unman me for the confession I have to make? Come, man, pick up the papers, put them in your pocket, and to-morrow, when your head is perfectly clear, fill them up with such amounts as you want; but remember your promisc, Conroy, and forget the matter as much as possible after to-day.'

There was an effort on the part of Conroy to choke down the half sob, and to brush away the gathering tears, but it was unsuccessful, and in the next instant the friends were in each other's arms, embracing with all the earnestness of lovers.

'This will never do, Conroy,' said Cloyden with a half-laugh, as he drew his friend to the sofa. 'I came to ask your advice in a matter that concerns all my future, and this little affair of yours is consuming all the time. Listen now to me. My old friend, I am about to marry.'

Mr. Allen Conroy started, and looked with astonishment at the speaker.

'Why do you seem so much surprised? Am I too old?'

'No; but from you the thought of marriage seems to come so strangely. You, who have never yet been able to see merit enough in woman to command your admiration.'

'Save only thine own fair wife and daughter, good Allen; but there are many words yet to my bargain, my friend, the greatest of them being that I have not yet asked the lady for her consent, though I am somewhat egotistically assured of it. I have spoken no words that may not have been spoken

O blind father! who had not in all those long months seen the love that flashed out of those blue eyes at the incoming of Cloyden! How could he be

my age?

twice her years could win the love of

'My dear Allen,' said Cloyden, looking earnestly at his friend, 'it is time I ceased to play at cross-purposes with you. I love your daughter, Ellinor, and it was to ask her at your hands that I came here this morning. I believe that she loves me, if I have not mistaken the confidence and respect she has shown for the deeper feeling. There is a great difference, Allen, in our ages, and to you I determined from the first to submit that question, before I had spoken one word to Ellinor that she or I would wish unsaid. The days of romance have passed with me, Allen, but yet I believe I am not mistaken in thinking that Ellinor loves me, and that even between the man of forty and the woman of eighteen, as strong an attachment can live as though they were more equally matched.'

It needed no words from Mr. Allen Conroy to show the speaker how his confessions were received. There was a light in his face, and a warm reaching forward of the heart sparkling in the eye of Mr. Allen, that said more than all language. When at last there came speech, it was only to say:

'Let us go then!'

In a few minutes they stood in the presence of a matronly woman of almost forty, still handsome, and bearing about her all the marks of ease in life and abrogation of care, and of a fair-skinned, blue-eyed girl, full of laughing happiness, that danced out from every glance of her eyes and every curl of her goldentinged hair. The first was Marion, that flaxen-haired wife whom Allen Conroy, the journeyman carpenter, had taken to his attic home, twenty years before, and

among the strange antics of the boygod, that he should not be more careful of this same disparity of years! To be sure Cloyden bore his years better by far than nine tenths of the gallants of the day; to be sure his eyes were brighter, his skin smoother, and his teeth whiter; to be sure he had passed that age when he sought a wife only for a pretty face, that she might for a few months minister to his pride while her beauty lasted, and had reached the period when, with the warm love he felt for the beautiful girl before him, there was blended an instinct that led him to believe that none could enhance the happiness or make the future of Ellinor Conroy so certainly as himself. There was no passion mingled with that love; on both sides the fount flowed as purely as between father and child, or between brother and sister.

But if man be blind in affairs of the heart, no such charge can be laid to woman. When Mr. Allen entered the room where sat his wife and daughter, walking deliberately to the first, and with a face lit with the happiness in his heart, kissed her, before the very eyes of Cloyden, without notice or provocation, the good Marion knew as well as though volumes of words had been spoken. The intelligence went like a flash to the heart of the wife, unlocking in an instant all the pent-up dreams of many months, the fears and hopes, the thoughts that, though based on surety, she had not confided to any keeping save that of her own heart. It was the kiss of her husband that acted so like a magic key, and set loose the store in a flood of joyous tears. There was no word spoken among those few, but as

Cloyden held open his arms and Ellinor rested herself within them, and laid her sweet, childlike head upon his bosom, the kiss upon her forehead, and the quick, clinging embrace in response, told all the story.

III.

FILAGREE-STREET.

Ir was a grand and stately street, running out as far as the eye could reach, flanked by tall and massive piles, frowning or smiling down upon the sunlit pavement. Houses gorgeous in glistening white marble, or solemn in brown stone. Wonderful houses, cold and impassive, looking for all the world as though they had but that moment stepped away from the hands of the valet, clean-shaved, clean-washed, and clean-brushed. To the denizens of Filagree-street, business was a myth, a thought that only came home from some distant spot, and there was locked fearfully in the secret hearts of such as practised its mysteries in other haunts. No corner-grocery startled the sight amid the marble and brown-stone of Filagree-street; no glaring colored light from a druggist's window; no vender of fish, vegetables, or kindling, ever polluted with his wagon or cry the hallowed precincts; no city cars swept with a hollow rumble through the almost grass-grown streets, or omnibus sawed its course, zig-zag, over the wellswept way. The vehicles of Filagreestreet were part and parcel of its gorgeousness, as much a portion of its belongings as were the solid railings or the massive stoops. They were rich in blooded teams, and gallant in varnish. They were proud in well-kept hammercloths and well-polished silver mountings. They rolled on in sullen magnificence, guided by their flunkey attendants, spurning the very ground over which they passed, or running lazy races with the passengers on the pavement. The walkers upon the pave of Filagree-street had peculiarly a style

belonging to themselves. They were not of the promenaders on Broadway, or of the dapper clerks upon downtown streets, nor yet did any burly mechanic or limed and sun-browned laborer push hastily along the way. There were old gentlemen with silver hair and wellbrushed hats and coats. There were faultlessly dressed ladies, flitting from house to house, running in for a few moments, or leaving cards with the elaborately got-up and smiling menservants who swung open the great doors. Children, too, were there, of every age and size, attended by their neat-capped, red-cheeked maids; children in silks and satins, with marvellous cloaks embroidered and fur-lined, with pigmy carriages drawn by patient nurses, with great waxen dolls owning wondrous staring eyes; fairy-like children with delicately-tinted skin, bright, laughing eyes, and kissable mouths.

Before a white marble house not so large as many of its fellows, but prouder by reason of good keeping, and gayer by the many lights that danced out from windows clad luxuriantly in lace and damask, and suggestive of fires within, stand two men. Strange loiterers were they for Filagree-street, and sadly lacking in the aristocratic belongings so necessary to those who sought its exclusive pave. The tallest, to all appearance, was a German. He was gaunt, thin, and unshaven ; a dirty black frock, buttoned to his chin, hid every vestige of a shirt, if its wearer carried such an article beneath it. A napless hat surmounted a close-cut head of hair, and a well-colored nose shone out like a beacon above a waste of dirt. The other was his peer in chronic filth, but bore resemblance in no other way. He was of middling stature, and as bloated and slouched as the first was gaunt and tight-buttoned, lacking all the daring and impudence, though possessed of the greater physical power. He leaned against the iron lamp-post much as though a hook, entered about the small of the back, was the support

'May be may be! Dere's as goot fish in der sea as ever was caught, my boy! May be! We shall see!'

The dash of a stately carriage to the door, the flashing of its occupants across the sidewalk, and a burst of music from the interior, as the door opened to receive them, drew for a moment a silence over the talk of the two.

'This is mighty poor work, uncle! not much hope for a man that wants his supper. Ugh! it's getting chill, and, what's more, there's getting to be too many lookers-on around here.'

'So! s-o! You was afrait, hey? Well! well! nobody will see you here, my boy. You must be brave, mine goot fellow; dere is goot luck layin' around now. So!'

'Good luck! Yes, for you. What do you risk?'

'Ah! ha! And you was not afrait, eh? No! no! no! he was not afrait of ter very teuce! And den who was your frent, eh? Who sticks to you when you gets in trouble, and finds somebody to get you out? So!'

'You might better leave me alone than to drag me out of prison and plunge me back to the life I lead. An't I more contented there? Do I have to watch and prowl there, like a hungry dog, to keep body and soul together?' 'Ya-as, and so der pr-ee-son is a goot place, and so he likes to be in pr-ee-son, he does! So! he likes der pr-ee-son because he gets goot drink dere. Plenty of fine whiskee, eh? So!'

'Yes, good fortune for you and Moses! What do I get by it? Does he ever pay me more than a quarter the worth of my swag? What did I get for that watch and chain last week? Seven dollars! It was worth fifty, if it was worth a cent.'

'Ay ay ay! my little man; not so fast! My frent Moses is an honest man; he does the best he can, so! What would you do with the watch, eh? Was it not advertised next day, and stopped at every pawnbroker's and fence's in an hour? So! Moses was lib-e-ral, my boy, so!'

'Ha! ha! ha! liberal! yes, liberal enough to keep me always in his toils. Curse Moses-and you, too.'

'So, now! We shall not quarrel. We must keep still, and stretch our eyes open, eh!'

There was another rattle and clatter, and another carriage came dashing towards the spot. Either through awkwardness, or from a desire to show the gathering upon the sidewalk his superior skill, the driver swept, with a sharp turn, to the door, grating the wheels fiercely against the curb. There was a falling back of the loungers for a moment, a loud cry of the driver to his staggering horses, a crash, and the off-horse lay struggling upon the stones. As quick as thought the carriage door was thrown open, the crowd pressed close around, and a gentleman with two ladies alighted. It was but an instant of excitement, the