he trustworthy?" inquired the magistrate. "You see there are
various little cash payments he will have to see to, is he clean
handed?"

"As good as gold, I assure you. I could trust him with thousands. Why
some of my own bills are in his keeping--" and with that he proceeded to
say as many pretty things of Margari as if he were a horse dealer trying
to palm off a blind nag on some ignorant bumpkin at a fair.

In his delight at having so successfully rid himself of such an incubus,
he made his _valet-de-chambre_ slip over to Margari to tell the worthy
man to wait upon him on the morrow at 11 o'clock precisely, as he had a
very pleasant piece of news to impart to him; for he meant to make
Margari believe that it was through his, Mr. John Lapussa's special
influence, that he had obtained the coveted appointment and so get him
to renounce all further claims upon his old patron.

On the very same day Mr. John was surprised to receive a visit from the
magistrate, Mr. Monori, and this certainly was a wonder, for the
magistrate never made any but official visits.

"To what do I owe this extraordinary pleasure?" asked Mr. John,
familiarly inviting the magistrate to sit down on a couch.

"I have come in the matter of this Margari," said Monori, holding
himself very stiffly and fixing his eyes sharply on Mr. John. "Since our
conversation of this morning, the circumstance has come to my knowledge
that one of my colleagues in the county of Arad has succeeded in finding
the long-lost Coloman Lapussa."

At these words Mr. John began to smooth out the ends of his mustache and
chew them attentively.

"The young man confesses to having forged the bill, but asserts that it
was Margari who led him to do so, and that the bill signed by him was
originally for forty florins only, so that undoubtedly somebody else
must have turned it into 40,000."

Mr. John coughed very much at these words,--no doubt the bit of mustache
which he had bit off stuck in his throat.

"This is a very ticklish circumstance, I must confess," continued
Monori, "for although the young man's offence has thereby been
considerably lightened, yet the burden of the charge has now been
shifted to other shoulders hitherto quite free from suspicion. No doubt,
he being a minor, under strict control, did what he did as a mere
schoolboy frolic, but this Margari and an unknown somebody else will
find it not quite such a laughing matter."

Mr. John's mustache was by thi