boat-glad I thought of that must fork over to Twine, too

to remonstrate :

- yes, Sir.

yes, Mr. Clausen, you -oh! I'll be just exactly shot if you

every mopus of it.

do n't!' he added with a patent diabolical shut-down, as Clausen turned interest and all: great mind to add a bonus, too, for the trouble Sloper's had with us. When shall it be? - h'm hum!' here Young Stopple-licks turned -Wednesday week? Now, Mr. Sloper, if

over a memorandum :

you'll take my word for it, and will call on Wednesday week, you 'll find it here- cash or check- slugs, rags, or dollars to order.'

according

From what I had seen, I concluded, before Young Satan had done, to run the chance, and took my leave with a bow. Hiram was out of town for a fortnight, and I passed the time in wonderation and rather duberous amazement. On the day appointed I was there, and by a second thought, did n't call till rather late. If Stopple-lees intends to pay, thought I, a few hours will make no difference, and if he does, he nay as well see that I believe in him. Sure enough, when I went in, he disbursed the shinplasters my money and Hiram's in full took a receipt, and quietly let out a civil request that we would n't say any hing about our being paid. And, all things considered, I concluded that we would n't. Every man for himself,' in New-York as in a certain other place, and when a man is so un-common lucky as to recover money that the debtor might have deluded payment on, there's no special call for blowing that I know of at least not along Wall

street, where men often button up' for much less.

When Hiram returned and found how things had been worked by Young Stopple-licks Satan, Esq., he pretty nigh went off with the high draw licks vulsconscions. On recovering, his first natural impulse was to offer his hat to me, and his second, to stand treat, which he did for exactly three hours hand running to all the friends he met along Broadway between Wall and Nassau-streets, in consequence of which he had such a bulging big crowd following him up to the Astor that a report was brought to Mr. Dana up at the Tribune office, that an impromptual mass-meeting ten thousand strong had broken out over by the Park, the bearer wishing to know if it should be local or first page leaded. After all had subsided, we concluded to lay off for more extensive eventuations. They came a few weeks after under the head of ANOTHER TREMENDOUS DEFALCATION!!! WALL-STREET IN A PANIC! followed by a grand blow-out in all the papers on the impropriety of stealing in general, and of the perverted genius of Adger Clausen in particular, who had forged, gouged, and spread himself altogether in a high old style on the fine-nancies. Of course an investigation was rushed up, the leading resolution of which was to the effect that as not the first imparticular speck of Edge-and-Claws-on was perceptible, and as his carpet-bag was likewise rather scarce, the probability was that he had slantendicularly diverged from the path of moral correctitude, and had taken out a through ticket to the other side of Jordan. Then there was a tremonstrous haul at the books, and a grand flourish of cross-cut cataqueeries at Young Satan, in the hope of vengeance, or something or other hot, all of which was met by that mild youth with answers and proofs that

he didn't know nothing-that he was a sort of model stupid clerk who copied off what he was told to, and entered as he was bid and had, moreover, lost thirty-seven dollars salary due and a silver pencil, gift of a relative, by the sudden moving of Clausen, who had borrowed it of him, as he firmly believed, gentlemen, with the deliberate intention of not returning it.

One or two mornings after, Twine and I concluded, as things were pretty well bust up, and the rags a-flying, we'd drop into Clausen's and see how Stopple-licks was getting along. There was a still look about the office the books and papers were all in place-nothing going on- and Young Satan sitting high and dry cn a desk smoking a segar, with the off-corners of his eye-brows drawn up higher than ever. Good morning, Sir,' says I.

'Morning, Sloper,' says he, without getting up. Twine-take a chair.'

But Hiram sat down on another desk opposite veesyvee· and a fine couple they made facing one another. It never struck me before how much some men do look like the devil, and how much stronger any look grows on us when we come across one of our own stripe. There was Stopple-lees, keen and hard, and Hiram, handsome and gentlemanly but the Yankee devil was marked on both of them in profile, and any body looking at 'em would have felt horse-racy, and wondered who'd get a-head.

'Sorry to see things look bad for Clausen?' remarked Hiram. 'Bust to awful flinders!' replied Stopple-licks : Twine you're out.'

never mind, 'That's a fact,' answered Hiram. 'We're on our cotton, high and dry over the freshet and the rush-logs, with nothing to holler at, and a great deal to holler on. Now, as neither Sloper nor I are hogs, who eat our acorns and walk off without so much as looking up at the tree they fell from, we called round, thinking that under the circumstances you might be in trouble, or cornered some how, in which case we would be very happy to assist you, with pecuniary or any sort of aid. In the first place, if not intrusive, I would like to know if you are complicated or troubled in any way in the Clausen business. Do n't answer if you

think it's none of our business.'

To this question Stopple-licks did, however, answer in a very novel and original style. With a very diabolical sneer, which seemed a large six-story block and back-buildings of contempt for such a trifling diffi culty, he replied :

Yap-hoo! No Sir-ree-e!'

'Have you reflected on your prospects in life- in

the future?'

RIP SAM! SET HER UP AGAIN!' was the equally lucid response. 'But have you got any bait to go a-fishing with?' I inquired. Poor orphan, kind gentlemen, of course, you know,' he answered, and I think he said this with the wickedest look by a long shot I ever And as he sort of shut one eye and almost laughed with the other, he gave his left arm and shoulder a twisted flop in the air and

saw.

went on:

Thirty-seven dollars of my salary lost by my late unprincipled employer and a silver pencil

'Silver your grandmother!' burst out Hiram. You'll do to travel. I reckon you won't be reduced to eating fried flies or baked bumble bees without butter - not this season at least. And now' here Hiram became serious and let down his tone-do n't be offended if I increase the great obligations we are under to you by a word of advice. Don't do this sort of thing too often. I know the horse you 're riding — know him all to pieces. When I started on this New-York course I thought that there was n't but one ticket to run, and that was to stick at next to nothing and be as sharp as the very d- 1. When I got older I begun to scratch that ticket. Look out. A man may go to the bank

once too often.'

'Go on, Twine,' says Stopple-lees, smoking away as if a moral lesson was as good as a free lecture. 'Propel!'

There are a good many young chaps of your stripe in New-York,' said Hiram. They would gouge Beelzebub out of his pitchfork and eye-teeth, if they could catch him anywhere between Beaver-street and Bleecker - in less than four seconds. They would contract to fill Tophet with brimstone in thirty days for nothing, and would then go bear-ing around until they roped some body into paying them for taking away the sulphur to do it with. Don't try it. The sharpest blade will get its edge across a nail some day, and those that do n't are nighty apt to wear away all the steel by such everlasting sharpening, until there's nothing but a dull, soft back left. A man ought to cut his eye-teeth- he's got to do it here in New-York but it's a bad plan to file them down like a cannibal.'

Suppose you are a cannibal, though, old fellow,' said Young Satan; 'or a razor -or a wolf.

'It won't do, my friend -it won't do. You know me pretty well; we've met down-town before this operation—and you know, to be plain, that though Smash-pipes-(what's his name?- Clausen) — got a foul snap on me this heat, I can be wolf, too.'

'True enough, Twine nobody ever made shucks out of you.'

Well, I begun long ago to get acquainted with Miss Playfair, and so did Sloper. Give her a call — she's a likely girl. And now to wind off. If we could have found a chance to do you a good turn, we'd have done it. If you ever get sposh and it 's very likely you may, running across the street among the stages the way you do Mace and I, if we're about, will try to set you up spand-clean. Perhaps it was rather green-owly of us to think you might be out of brads, and some men, after smashing Clausen as about east as you seem to have done it, would n't take the idea for much of a compliment. I might have thought that any body who could spare Sloper and I such debts, would n't be out of bullion - much.'

'Easy over the stones, there, Twine,' replied Stopple-licks. A man may be as poor as a crow and do another a good turn. Don't you think so, Sloper?' says he, letting out a puff of smoke, and looking me straight forward in the eyes with a very curious look, which I had noticed often before when he was talking with me. And I may say,

by the way, that it was, by a long shot, the most Christian look I had ever seen him raise. 'Don't you think so?'

'Well,' says I, 'I'm not one of your 'cute sort, so maybe ain't a judge. But as things go, I don't think that such good turns as yours are generally very common that is, not often.'

-

'You wouldn't believe, for instance,' says Stopple-lees, turning bow toward Hiram, that a man or boy would go without an over-coat in a Boston winter, to help suffering acquaintances that he didn't know much of, and had n't any particular reason for helping?'

'Well,' says Hiram, 'I would n't call a man a liar if he insisted on saying so. Such cards have turned up—even in gambling-houses.' Well, when they do happen,' says Stopple-lees, they ain't forgot, not even by cannibals. THAT'S SO !'

And as he let this out, there was a sort of old-timesy notion came over me- a recollection of things that I thought had drifted clean out with the tide and gone down all water-sogged years ago. They were things that had n't turned up extra-often in Mace Sloper's memory, and he had to give them two or three rolls over and fluff the dust out of 'em before he could exactly make out their color. And I was slow in finding them. First I went over old times in New-York - then the boy-days of Chippety Whonk in Massachusetts; then other spots, until I spotted them in Boston, in the regular start, when Mace was a young shaver of fifteen and sixteen, just getting under way and learning the ropes in the store of Mr. Coolidge Claflin - a youth just between hay and grass, and a very different style of goods from the precious samples of juvenility which rush every morning in an expensive flood down Broadway.

In those days Mace had got just a leetle too old and too genteel to play props with the boys, or go shares in a 'sight' on election-day, though he wasn't by any means so well off or so proud but that it was the tallest kind of a treat for him when he could afford to buy a small boiled lobster of a man who used to sell them out of a wheelbarrow in front of Boylston Market. But my more ordinary dissipation did n't generally go beyond buying two or three pennies' worth of nut-cakes, or maple-molasses candy from an old lady who kept shop in Cornhill, near the house of another old lady with whom Mace boarded on terms which would n't at the present day be considered particularly expensive in New-York for a well-grown cat.

Well, in the course of my one, two, and three-penny visits to this candy-shop, I used to sometimes meet and got acquainted with a pretty respectable-looking girl of about my own age, who used to lay out funds in the same luxuriant manner and on the same expensive scale. And Mace being naturally gallant, (though not 'cute,) always insisted on her taking the best of his, and in fact, often stood treat on many occasions in the most extravagant manner.

And so we candied along together, the acquaintance being just a plain good-natured, natural boy and girl acquaintance and nothing else. Now-a-days, I know, writers can't so much as make two nurses hold up a boy and girl baby face to face without rushing of them into an early but thrilling attachment, or a strange sympathy of soul, the first bust

ing out of young love; and really, from some facts that have come under Mace Sloper's notice, he begins to believe that the writers when they speak in that way of the present youthful generation ain't far from facts. Such, however, were n't the facts in my case— seeing as the heft of the sweetness lay in the candy and not in any courting whatever. Chirk and lively we both were, and Mace Sloper, like most boys at that age, no doubt thought himself all sorts of a chap, but the idea of sparking every pretty girl I met was rather above my bend then, and I did n't ambition it.

But I was well enough up to the fastinations of eating candy and nut-cake in good company, and had so far cottoned to Miss Mary Batchelder (that was her name) in the business, that I began to feel considerable sorry when I found that her shopping of an evening was growing scarcer and scarcer, till at last it thinned out altogether and came up wanting. I knew that Mary had a sick mother, and I also rather reckoned that she was running short of pennies, which caused Mace to come out on several occasions in a very noble manner and show a disregard of expense, which, if carried out in proportion to his funds at the present day, would have the immediate effect of transferring the big emerald-headed-diamond-snake bracelet now in Mr. Tiffany's show-case to the arm of Amelia Twiggles - but to propel!

Mary's visits to the shop at last stopped altogether and I saw nothing of her for two or three months. I rather got out of the way of going there myself, until it happened that one evening at the end of the time we met in the old place again. And she was so changed and looked so poor, and pale, and peaky, that Mace began to feel considerable wamble-cropt himself, and after laying in a double-extra stock of good things, started for a regular long walk and talk in good oldfashioned style.

Mary had got as far as the Common, keeping a pretty stiff upper lip, but when there, and she opened her mouth for a talk, the poor cosset burst into tears. She had a doleful story, one of those which bear hard on grown-up people, but which cut deep down with young ones who have never seen any serious sorrows and who perhaps cry, or come near it, when they hear of them from others. And the first trouble Mary told of was the greatest in life— the woful loss which, whenever it really touches a heart, gives it a different shade forever. She had lost her mother.

Mace Sloper forgot all the manly ways he had been picking up about the store, all the lessons of Boston, and remembered nothing but home and his own dear old mother knitting away in the humstead at Chippety Whonk, when Mary Batchelder told how her mother had come with them from the West, hoping to meet in Boston a brother expected from abroad, who never arrived; how she had fallen sick and been strange among strangers and grown poor; how she had written to relations left behind, who had never answered; how her mother grew worse, and how, with scarcely an acquaintance to aid in sickness, she had died.

And as it grew night and the stars shone out, young Mace Sloper sat down on the little low old broken fence which was round the Common