than all his most artful devices, and indeed it shows
with clearness how often the superadded efforts fraud contributes to
insure success are as frequently the very sources of its failure,--just
as we see in darker crimes how the over care and caution of the murderer
have been the clew that has elicited the murder.

Ysaffich wished me to detail, amongst the memories of my childhood, the
having heard often of the great estate and vast fortune to which I was
entitled. He wanted me to supply, as it were from memory, many links
of the chain of evidence that seemed deficient,--vague recollections of
having heard this, that, and the other; but, with an obstinacy that
to him appeared incomprehensible, I held to my own unadorned tale, and
would not add a word beyond my own conviction.

Mr. Ragge, the solicitor by whom the case was undertaken, seemed most
favorably impressed by this reserve on my part; and, far from being
discouraged by my ignorance of certain points, appeared, on the
contrary, only the more satisfied as to the genuineness of my story.
Over and over have I felt in my conversations with him how impossible it
would have been for me to practise any deception successfully with him.
Without any semblance of cross-examination, he still contrived to bring
me again and again over the same ground, viewing the same statement from
different sides, and trying to discover a discrepancy in my narrative.
When at length assured, to all appearance, at least, of my being the
person I claimed to be, he drew up a statement of my case for
counsel, and a day was named when I should be personally examined by a
distinguished member of the bar. I cannot even now recall that interview
without a thrill of emotion. My sense of hope, dashed as it was by a
conscious feeling that I was, in some sort, practising a deception,--for
in all my compact with Ysaffich our attempt was purely a fraud,--I
entered the chamber with a faltering step and a failing heart Far,
however, from questioning and cross-questioning, like the solicitor, the
lawyer suffered me to tell my story without even so much as a word of
interruption. I had, I ought to remark, divested my tale of many of
the incidents which really befell me. I made my life one of commonplace
events and unexciting adventures, in which poverty occupied the
prominent place. I as cautiously abstained from all mention of the
distinguished persons with whom accident had brought me into contact,
since