“_Precisement._ Monsieur cannot see Madame Charlton.” “I’ll search the house for her, at any rate. Out of the way, you blasted old ape!” Here a policeman, provided for the occasion by Toussaint, and who had been smoking in the front room opening on the hall, made his appearance. “You can’t enter this house,” said Blake, carelessly knocking the ashes from his cigar. Charlton had a wholesome respect for authority. He drew back on seeing the imperturbable Blake, with the official star on his breast, and said, “I came here, Mr. Blake, to recover a little gold box that I have reason to believe my wife has left with this old nigger.” “Well, she might have left it in worse hands,—eh, Toussaint?” said Blake, resuming his cigar; and then, removing it, he added, “If you call this old man a nigger again, I’ll make a nigger of you with my fist.” Toussaint might have taken for his motto that of the old eating-house near the Park,—“_Semper paratus_.” The gold box having been committed to him to deposit in a place of safety, he had meditated long as to the best disposition he could make of it. As he stood at the window of his house, looking thoughtfully out, he saw coming up the street a gay old man, swinging a cane, humming an opera tune, and followed by a little dog. As the dashing youth drew nearer, Toussaint recognized in him an old acquaintance, and a man not many years his junior,—Mr. Albert Pompilard, stock-broker, Wall Street. No two men could be more unlike than Toussaint and Pompilard; and yet they were always drawn to each other by some subtle points of attraction. Pompilard was a reckless speculator and spendthrift; Toussaint, a frugal and cautious economist; but he had been indebted for all his best investments to Pompilard. Bold and often audacious in his own operations, Pompilard never would allow Toussaint to stray out of the path of prudence. Not unfrequently Pompilard would founder in his operations on the stock exchange. He would fall, perhaps, to a depth where a few hundred dollars would have been hailed as a rope flung to a drowning man. Toussaint would often come to him at these times and offer a thousand dollars or so as a loan. Pompilard, in order not to hurt the negro’s feelings, would take it and pretend to use it; but it would be always put securely aside, out of his reach, or deposited in some bank to Toussaint’s credit. Toussaint stood at his door as Pompilard drew nigh. “Ha! good morning, my guide, philosopher, and friend!” exclaimed the stock-broker. “What’s in the wind now, Toussaint? Any money to invest?” “No, Mr. Pompilard; but here’s a box that troubles me.” “A box! Not a pill-box, I hope? Let me look at it. Beautiful! beautiful, exceedingly! It could not be duplicated for twelve hundred dollars. Whose is it? Ah! here’s an inscription,—‘_Henry Berwick to Emily_.’ Berwick? It was a Henry Berwick who married my wife’s niece, Miss Aylesford.”