POOR Malcolm, after escaping from the clutches of Dunbar, sold off all the goods and household furniture which he had removed to the best possible advantage, and calling together his creditors, gave them a history of his misfortunes, and divided among them the sum of one thousand dollars, all that he had received from the sale of what he had been able to save. It liquidated but thirty-three and one-third cents on the dollar of his debts. He had previously secured a clerkship paying a small salary. In consideration of his honesty in doing what was in his power, in this his last extremity, his creditors voluntarily signed him a full release from the balance of their claims against him. One evening, a few days after this had taken place, Mr. Harrison called upon him at his boarding house. They met alone in the public parlor. Mr. Harrison was kind in his manner, but Malcolm was smarting yet too severely from the consequences of the late suit to feel in any mood for a cordial reception of his relative. "Malcolm," said the old gentleman, after they were seated, "from my attorney who defended the late suit that you brought against me, I learned some facts that I never knew before. I always believed my title to the property I hold to be clear, and never could imagine upon what just ground you claimed to contest it. But your attorney discovered, or you discovered it to him, a matter of which I have always been ignorant, and which gives color to the opinion you have so pertinaciously held in regard to your rights in my estate. That you have some right in it I think may be the case, though certainly not to the extent you have imagined. I have little doubt that, if you had not been thrown out of court on a demurrer, the court would have given you some twenty or thirty thousand dollars. This is my own lawyer's opinion." "Then," said Malcolm, "it is clearly my duty to begin again." "I would advise you to try another lawyer, if you do." "Why so?" asked Malcolm. "Because the one you had took a bribe to introduce to the court a defective bill." "You are jesting," said Malcolm. "No," replied Harrison, quietly; "I am entirely in earnest. My lawyer suggested that Dunbar could be bought over to our interests, and I took it into my head to see if he really was in earnest. Sure enough, Dunbar named thirty thousand dollars as the price he would take to introduce a defect in his bill, that we might throw you out of court, saddled with costs so great that you could not pay them, without which it would be impossible to begin again." "And this was done?" "Yes." "You paid him thirty thousand dollars to defraud me?" "I loaned him that much out of his wife's fortune—or, rather, his wife to be." "I don't understand you." Harrison explained all that matter, and then added—