What diligence and strict attention to business do men exhibit when they start out to wreck their own lives and break the hearts of those near to them! In a play by a modern writer, one scene presents Satan flying at midnight over one of our cities, while the drunken songs and joyous shouts of some gilded revelers rise in the night. The merry songs and laughter are music to the ears of Lucifer. He pauses in his flight to listen, and as the songs and shouts increase in volume he looks down on the revelers and with a bitter sneer soliloquizes thus of them: "Ye are my bondsmen and my thralls, Your lives I fill with bitter pain." And that sums it up pretty well; but we must look straight away from the entrance of the Primrose Way to the exit. Well, I had successfully played my trump card on the Rothschilds, and, not seeing the end, thought I had won, and cleverly won; so before sitting down to dinner I went to the telegraph office and telegraphed to my partners: "The Egyptians all passed over the Red Sea. But the Hebrews are drowned therein." Thinking this rather witty, I went to dinner well satisfied. An hour past midnight the moon looked from behind a cloud and saw me, one of many miserables, leaning over the bulwark of that wretched Dover steamer, again paying tribute to Neptune. CHAPTER XXII. "ACCEPTED. LIONEL ROTHSCHILD." When George and Mac received my telegram they, knowing the difficulties of my mission, deemed it incredible that I had succeeded within a day, so when my telegram came they thought I was attempting some jest. Upon my arrival in London, walking into Mac's room--he being still in bed--I announced that I had in my pocket Rothschild's bill for L6,000, drawn on the London house. He flatly refused to believe me, but when he, and later George, saw the bill, they were forced to believe. I at once took it down to St. Swithin's lane, and, leaving it for acceptance, called the next day, when I found scrawled across it in thin, pale ink the mystic words "Accepted. Lionel Rothschild." The bill itself was drawn on cheap, blue paper, on the same form as the blank bills to be had at the Paris stationers', where I had bought some. From Rothschilds' I went direct to the hotel where we had our rendezvous, and the acceptance was so simple and easy that Mac had it copied on another bill in ten minutes. The business methods of the bank were so loose that there was no necessity for imitating signatures, but as a precaution this was done to some extent. I then proceeded to the Bank of England for my last personal interview with the manager. I must halt here for a brief space in the narrative, in order to enlighten my reader upon some new developments, also to introduce the new member we at this time brought into our firm. [Illustration: "NOYES ESCORTED BY AN ANGRY MOB TO NEWGATE."--Page 379]