se are the
little accidents which generally decide our fate in life--the visit to
some friend, the call on a stranger, the unpremeditated walk. As the
Baron was passing along, a carriage suddenly stopped, a
'fashionably-dressed gentleman' jumped out, and ran up to the traveller
with a cordial salutation. He introduced himself as a guest who had
dined, with the Baron, at a dinner given by Lord Augustus Loftus in
Sydney. 'I am one of the admirers,' he said, 'of your "Promenade autour
du Monde," and I venture to ask you to do me the favour of writing your
name in my copy of that book. In return, pray accept a volume of
Longfellow's poems, with the author's autograph.' The fashionable
stranger had skilfully touched the weak place in an author's heart.
Baron Huebner consented to be driven back to his hotel, where his new
friend was also residing. On the way, the stranger suddenly bethought
himself that the two books were at the house of an acquaintance, 'two
steps from the hotel.' He put his head out of the window, gave some
fresh directions to the coachman, and the Baron soon found himself being
whirled along at a furious rate along streets which he did not
recognize. Still, the old traveller had no suspicion of anything wrong.
His voyages and adventures certainly seem to have left him in a more
than ordinarily unsophisticated condition. At last the carriage stopped,
our author was conducted into the dark passage of a small house, and
then into a little dirty room, where he found a tall man seated before a
table, with his back to a mirror. In that mirror, the Baron saw his dear
friend from Sydney gently lock the door, and put the key in his pocket.
Then he understood all about it.

Of course the tall man was polite, and after promising to go and fetch
the volume of Longfellow, he proposed to the gentleman from Sydney a
game at cards. While the two men played their sham game, the Baron had
time to reflect; he saw that he had been pounced upon very skilfully--in
less than two hours the 'Bothnia' would sail, all the people at the
hotel would think he had gone by her, no one would miss him, no one
would search for him. He might be murdered with impunity--with what
impunity the Baron would have fully realized if he had known a little
more of New York. No city in the world presents greater facilities for
getting rid of the evidences of foul play. We have not seen the recent
statistics of murders in New York, and doubt whether the