The gentleman(?) who is the hero of the narrative—for he was recognized as a gentleman in society—had been in the frequent receipt, by mail, of remittances in large and small sums. Not long since he made his appearance at the desk of the chief clerk in the post-office, and alleged that he had just taken from his box a letter from which a draft on a city bank for about one hundred dollars had been fraudulently abstracted, and, as the point from which the letter had been mailed was but a short distance from Philadelphia, he was confident that the draft had been abstracted by some one in the post-office here. This imputation on the character of the office nettled the chief clerk, and that functionary determined to sift the matter to the bottom and ferret out the criminal, if such there was. He made the necessary inquiries as to the day the letter was due here, closely cross-examined the clerks, and, after a diligent investigation, proceeded to the bank on which the draft was drawn. He found that _it had been paid_, and bore the indorsement, or seeming indorsement, of the loser. He borrowed the draft and brought it to the office. On comparing the apparently-forged signature of the loser on the back of the document with the handwriting of a certain night-clerk, a remarkable resemblance was discovered. Several experts were called in, and declared that the handwriting of the clerk and the chirography of the “forger” were one and the same. A clerk in the bank was privately shown the suspected clerk, and he identified him as the man _to whom the money had been paid_! The network seemed to be closing around the poor night-clerk, and it was determined that he should be arrested. The chief clerk, jubilant at his discovery, sent for the merchant who said he had lost the draft. While the chief clerk and the merchant were closeted in the postmaster’s private office, and the former was detailing his success to the merchant, he observed, as he proceeded with the recital, that the merchant began to wear a livid hue; his countenance assumed a pallid aspect, in which a guilty conscience seemed to come to the surface to horrify and disgust the beholder. Trembling lips, too, were seen, and, as the truth in all its damning meanness flashed across the mind of the chief clerk, he at once boldly charged the merchant with having written his own signature _in a feigned hand_, so as to secure the spoils of his own guilt and ruin an innocent man. The guilty, miserable creature, overwhelmed with confusion, confessed his guilt and implored mercy. He acknowledged his criminality in the whole transaction,—a transaction which was about to stain forever the reputation of an honest, hard-working man, whose only capital was his skill as a scrivener and his integrity in his clerical position. The chief clerk, determined that the reputation of the night-clerk should be vindicated, threatened to have the guilty merchant