ht and opened
another door. He was more successful this time; one glance of his eye
assured him that the man he was in search of, sat before him. He had
never seen Mr. Holt; but the regular if vitiated features of the person
upon whom he now intruded, his lank but not ungraceful form, and free if
not airy manners, were not so common among the denizens of this
unwholesome quarter, that there could be any doubt as to his being the
accomplished but degenerate individual whose once attractive air had
stolen the heart of Colonel Japha's daughter.

He was sitting in front of a small pine table, and when Mr. Sylvester's
eyes first fell upon him, was engaged in watching with a somewhat
sinister smile, the final twirl of a solitary nickle which he had set
spinning on the board before him. But at the sound of a step at the
door, a lightning change passed over his countenance, and rising with a
quick anticipatory "Ah!" he turned with hasty action to meet the
intruder. A second exclamation and a still more hasty recoil were the
result. This was not the face or the form of him whom he had expected.

"Mr. Holt, I believe?" inquired Mr. Sylvester, advancing with his most
dignified mien.

The other bowed, but in a doubtful way that for a moment robbed him of
his usual air of impudent self-assertion.

"Then I have business with you," continued Mr. Sylvester, laying the
man's own card down on the table before him. "My name is Sylvester," he
proceeded, with a calmness that surprised himself; "and I am the uncle
of the young man upon--whom you are at present presuming to levy
blackmail."

The assurance which for a moment had deserted the countenance of the
other, returned with a flash. "His uncle!" reechoed he, with a low
anomalous bow; "then it is from you I may expect the not unreasonable
sum which I demand as the price of my attentions to your nephew's
interest. Very good, I am not particular from what quarter it comes, so
that it does come and that before the clock has struck the hour which I
have set as the limit of my forbearance."

"Which is seven o'clock, I believe?"

"Which is seven o'clock."

Mr. Sylvester folded his arms and sternly eyed the man before him. "You
still adhere to your intention, then, of forwarding to Mr. Stuyvesant at
that hour, the sealed communication now in the hands of your lawyer?"

The smile with which the other responded was like the glint of a partly
sheathed dagger. "My lawyer has already rece