“I looked at him; he returned my gaze with a cold nonchalence more suggestive of a deep laid purpose, than even his previous glance of feverish determination. I immediately let my eye run over his scanty clothing and loose flowing hair and beard. ‘Yes,’ said I, with as much sarcasm as I knew how to assume, ‘if you dare risk the consequences, I think I may.’ He at once drew himself up. ‘You think,’ said he, ‘that you have a commonplace adventurer to deal with; that my appearance is going to testify in your favor; that you have but to deny any accusation which such a hungry-looking, tattered wretch as I, may make, and that I shall be ignominiously kicked out of the presence into which I have forced myself; that in short I have been building my castle in the air. Mr. Sylvester, I am a poor devil but I am no fool. When I left Dey Street on the twenty-fifth of February two years ago, it was with a sealed paper in my pocket, in which was inscribed all that I had heard on that day. This I took to a lawyer’s office, and not being, as I have before said, quite as impecunious in those days as at present, succeeded in getting the lawyer, whom I took care should be a most respectable man, to draw up a paper to the effect that I had entrusted him with this statement—of whose contents he however knew nothing—on such a day and hour, to which paper a gentleman then present, consented at my respectful solicitation to affix his name as witness, which gentleman, strange to say, has since proved to be a director of the bank of which you are the present cashier, and consequently the very man of all others best adapted to open the paper whose seal you profess to be so willing to see broken.’
“ ‘His name!’ It was all that I could say. ‘Stuyvesant,’ cried the man, fixing me with his eye in which I in vain sought for some signs of secret doubt or unconscious wavering. I rose; the position in which I found myself was too overwhelming for instant decision. I needed time for reflection, possibly advice—from you. A resolution to brave the devil must be founded on something more solid than impulse, to hold its own unmoved. I only stopped to utter one final word and ask one leading question. ‘You are a smart man,’ said I, ‘and you are also a villain. Your