The steamer we purposed to load our money on and ourselves, too, was the Chimborazo, advertised to arrive on Tuesday and to leave for the River Plate and the west coast the next day. So it was agreed that on Monday Mac should go to the bank and arrange to cash his letters for twenty or thirty thousand pounds, and go the next day for the money. As soon as Mac came from the bank and announced that all was well, another of us was to call at the Bank of London and Rio and the River Plate Bank, present his letters of introduction and ask in each bank to have the five thousand pounds or ten thousand pounds ready the next day. They purposed to call about 11 o'clock, so as to give me time to exchange the Brazilian bank notes for sovereigns, and to buy my ticket by the Chimborazo, to secure my stateroom and to take the gold to the steamer, and, above all, to get my passport vised by the police. Monday came. We expected a nervous day, not such a paralyzingly nervous one as it proved to be. In fact, a nervous Tuesday followed a nervous Monday. My reader must remember that we were in the tropics, with a blazing sun looking down on us with an intensity that made one long for Greenland's icy mountains to cool us. We went into the public park for our last consultation before our fortune, which never came, was to come. Mac had in the little morocco case in his pocket two letters each for L20,000. Certainly no man in the world, save him, could have carried off such a game played for such high stakes. Handsome in person, faultless in address, cool in nerve, a master of all the languages spoken in Rio--Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French. Above all, he had a boundless confidence in himself. What an honorable future might have been his but for his youthful follies! Truly he could have achieved a wonderful success in any honorable career. Unhappily for him, he, like thousands of our brainiest youth, had entered the Primrose Way. In our youthful fire and thoughtlessness we saw only the flowers and heard the siren's song, but at last the Primrose Way led us down into a gloom where all the flowers withered and the gay songs turned into dirges. Looking at his watch Mac jumped up, saying: "It is 10.45 and time to be off." So he started for the bank, we following at some distance, our nerves all on the stretch. We felt that our lives and fortunes were trembling in the balance. The minutes dragged like hours. While watching we saw several persons enter or leave the bank, and still our friend delayed his appearance.