f tens in your additions on the debit side of the
cash book. Do you understand?"

"Not clearly."

"You are dull. Change a figure in footing up your cash book, so that
it will balance, notwithstanding a deficit of two hundred dollars.
After you come back, this can be set right again. No one will think
of adding up the back columns to see if there is any fraud."

"After Sanford ceased speaking, his friend cast his eyes to the
floor, and reflected for some time. There was in his mind a powerful
struggle between right and wrong. When the plan was first presented,
he felt an inward shrinking from it. It involved an act of fraud,
that, if found out, would blast his character. But the longer he
reflected, and the more fully he looked in the face of the fact that
without money he could not proceed to the consummation of his
wishes, the more favorable the plan seemed.

"But," he said, lifting his eyes and drawing a long breath, "if it
should be found out?"

"Larkin will not expose his son-in-law for his daughter's sake."

"True--there is something there to hope for. Well, I will think of
it. I must have two hundred dollars from some source."

And he did think of it to evil purpose. He found no very great
difficulty in getting Jane to consent to run away with him,
especially as her particular friend, Harriet Meadows, was to
accompany her on a like mad-cap expedition with Sanford.

Nothing occurred to prevent the acts proposed. By false entries,
Hatfield was enabled to abstract two hundred dollars in a way that
promised a perfect concealment of the fraud, although in doing it he
felt much reluctance and many compunctions of conscience.

About ten days after the conversation between the young men, just
given, Jane Larkin obtained her mother's consent to spend a few days
with a cousin who resided some miles from the city on a road along
which one of the omnibus lines passed. Harriet Meadows did not use
this precaution to elude suspicion. She left her father's house at
the time agreed upon, and joined young Sanford at an appointed
place, where a carriage was waiting, into which Hatfield and Jane
had already entered. The two couples then proceeded to the house of
an alderman, who united them in marriage bonds. From thence they
drove to a railroad depot, took passage for a neighboring city, and
were soon gliding away, a suspicion unawakened in the minds of the
young ladies' friends.

The absence of Harriet on the night fol