n supply you with
incontestable proof. If, after this proof, you can give credit to his
story, I shall think you made of very perverse and credulous materials."

"The proof you mention," said I, "will only enhance his credibility. All
the facts which you have stated have been admitted by him. They
constitute an essential portion of his narrative."

"What then is the inference? Are not these evidences of a compact
between them? Has he not acknowledged this compact in confessing that he
knew Welbeck was my debtor; that he was apprized of his flight, but that
(what matchless effrontery!) he had promised secrecy, and would, by no
means, betray him? You say he means to return; but of that I doubt. You
will never see his face more. He is too wise to thrust himself again
into the noose; but I do not utterly despair of lighting upon Welbeck.
Old Thetford, Jamieson, and I, have sworn to hunt him through the world.
I have strong hopes that he has not strayed far. Some intelligence has
lately been received, which has enabled us to place our hounds upon his
scent. He may double and skulk; but, if he does not fall into our toils
at last, he will have the agility and cunning, as well as the malignity,
of devils."

The vengeful disposition thus betrayed by Wortley was not without
excuse. The vigour of his days had been spent in acquiring a slender
capital; his diligence and honesty had succeeded, and he had lately
thought his situation such as to justify marriage with an excellent
woman, to whom he had for years been betrothed, but from whom his
poverty had hitherto compelled him to live separate. Scarcely had this
alliance taken place, and the full career of nuptial enjoyments begun,
when his ill fate exposed him to the frauds of Welbeck, and brought him,
in one evil hour, to the brink of insolvency.

Jamieson and Thetford, however, were rich, and I had not till now been
informed that they had reasons for pursuing Welbeck with peculiar
animosity. The latter was the uncle of him whose fate had been related
by Mervyn, and was one of those who employed money, not as the medium of
traffic, but as in itself a commodity. He had neither wines nor cloths,
to transmute into silver. He thought it a tedious process to exchange
to-day one hundred dollars for a cask or bale, and to-morrow exchange
the bale or cask for one hundred _and ten_ dollars. It was better to
give the hundred for a piece of paper, which, carried forthwith to the
money-c