n instant, quickly stepped between them. Miller
raised his eyes and smiled, and those who heard knew that this miserable
creature had been through the fire and come forth to speak true things.

The trial of Ammon involved practically the reproving of the case
against Miller, for which the latter had been convicted and sentenced to
ten years in State's prison, whence he now issued like one from the tomb
to point the skeleton, incriminating finger at his betrayer. But the
case began by the convict-witness testifying that the whole business was
a miserable fraud from start to finish, carried on and guided by the
advice of the defendant. He told how he, a mere boy of twenty-one,
burdened with a sick wife and baby, unfitted by training or ability for
any sort of lucrative employment, a hanger-on of bucket shops and, in
his palmiest days, a speculator in tiny lots of feebly margined stocks,
finding himself without means of support, conceived the alluring idea of
soliciting funds for investment, promising enormous interest, and paying
this interest out of the principal intrusted to him. For a time he
preyed only upon his friends, claiming "inside information" of large
"deals" and paying ten per cent. per week on the money received out of
his latest deposits.

Surely the history of civilization is a history of credulity. Miller
prospered. His earlier friend-customers who had hesitatingly taken his
receipt for ten dollars, and thereafter had received one dollar every
Monday morning, repeated the operation and returned in ever-increasing
numbers. From having his office "in his hat," he took an upper room in a
small two-story house at 144 Floyd Street, Brooklyn--an humble tenement,
destined to be the scene of one of the most extraordinary exhibitions of
man's cupidity and foolishness in modern times. At first he had tramped
round, like a pedler, delivering the dividends himself and soliciting
more, but soon he hired a boy. This was in February, 1899. Business
increased. The golden flood began to appear in an attenuated but
constant rivulet. He hired four more employees and the whole top floor
of the house. The golden rivulet became a steady stream. From a
"panhandler" he rolled in ready thousands. The future opened into
magnificent auriferous distances. He began to call himself "The Franklin
Syndicate," and to advertise that "the way to wealth is as plain as the
road to the market." He copied the real brokers and scattered circula