His friend Gorman, who would not have bent the joint of his little finger to have saved him from destruction, was so anxious to get up a good appearance, for the sake of getting the insurance effected advantageously, that he did his best to carry out his part of the plan, and, being a man of energy who in the paths of virtue might have risen to a high position among men, he succeeded beyond his expectation. Crowds of purchasers were sent by him to the shop of "the celebrated toy-man." Some were mere decoy-ducks, who came and went (for a consideration) pretty frequently, and only "priced" the goods. Others were genuine purchasers, and between the two they created so much traffic in the toy-shop, that the multitude--so difficult to move by mere suasion, but so prone to follow blindly in the wake of a senseless rush, when once the rush takes place--began to move in the direction of the toyshop, and shortly before Christmas the demand for toys was so great, that Boone had to engage two assistants to carry on the business, and even the lane itself began to feel the benefit of the sudden increase of traffic. All this was patent to the eyes of David Boone, but he was so overwhelmed with a sense of the guilt he was about to incur, and the deception he was even then practising, that he regarded the whole affair as a hollow bubble, which would soon burst and leave nothing behind. Even the rapid increase of the credit-balance in his bank-book did not affect his opinion, for he was not much of a financier, and, knowing that his transactions were founded on deception, he looked on the balance as being deceptive also. Not so thought Gorman. That wily individual perceived, to his amazement, that things were taking a turn which had never been contemplated, so he silently looked on and wondered, and chuckled and resolved to abide his time. As prosperity flowed in upon him, David Boone became more insane--for his condition of mind was little, if at all, short of temporary insanity--and his proceedings became more eccentric than ever. Among other things, he became suddenly smitten with a desire to advertise, and immediately in the columns of the tapers appeared advertisements to the effect that "The Celebrated Toy Emporium" was to be found in Poorthing Lane. Finding that this increased his business considerably, he hit upon a plan of advertising which has been practised rather extensively of late years in London. He sent out an army of boys with pots of whitewash and brushes, with directions to print in rough but large legible letters the words, "Who's Boone?" on all the blank walls of the metropolis, and in the papers he answered the question by having printed under the same title, "Why, the manager of the Toy Emporium, to be sure, in Poorthing Lane." He also advertised specially that he had in stock, "an assortment of 500 golden-haired dolls from Germany, full-dressed, half-dressed, and naked."