ee!" And so speaking, he drew himself up
his full six feet, and turned slowly around. There could not be any
question about it: a handsomer, a more distinguished-looking man was
not to be found in all New York. With the added dignity of age, his
look of distinction would be but increased.

The great head of the great tailoring establishment was visibly
affected. Original devices in advertising had been the making of him.
He perceived that the device now suggested to him was superior to
anything that his own genius had struck out. "It's a pretty good plan,"
he said, meditatively. "What do you want for carrying it out?"

"For you to serve two weeks, I ask but the clothes I go to wear."

For a moment the tailor paused. In that moment the destinies of Jaune
d'Antimoine, of Rose Carthame, of the Count Siccatif de Courtray, hung
in the balance. It was life or death. Jaune felt his heart beating like
a trip-hammer. There was upon him a feeling of suffocation. The silence
seemed interminable; and the longer it lasted, the more did he feel
that his chances of success were oozing away, that the crisis of his
life was going against him. Darkness, the darkness of desolate despair,
settled down upon his soul. Mechanically he felt in his waistcoat
pocket for a five-cent piece that he believed to be there--for the
stillness, the restful oblivion of the North River were in his mind.
His fingers clutched the coin convulsively, thankfully. At least he
would not be compelled' to walk down Christopher Street to his death:
he could pay his way to eternity in the one-horse car. Yet even while
the blackness of shattered hope seemed to be closing him in
irrevocably, the glad light came again. As the voice of an angel
sounded the voice of the tailor; and the words which the tailor spake
were these:

"Young man, it's a bargain!"

But the tailor, upon whom Heaven had bestowed shrewdness to an
extraordinary degree, perceived in the plan proposed to him higher,
more artistic possibilities than had been perceived in it by its
inventor. There was a dramatic instinct, an appreciation of surprise,
of climax, in this man's mind that he proceeded to apply to the
existing situation. With a wave of his hand he banished the suggested
sign on the walking advertiser's back, and the suggested silken banner.
His plan at once was simpler and more profound. Dressed in the highest
style of art, Jaune was to walk Broadway daily between the hours of 11
A. M. a