So the first man gives him one five-pound note. The second man has to pay his landlady's rent, and he owes her three pounds; so he gives her the five-pound note, and she gives him two pounds in gold back again. From the landlady the note passes to a shopkeeper, and from him to another man; and so it goes on, wandering and wandering through the hands of hundreds of people. It started a very nice clean new note; but it gets crumpled and dirty, and at last one day it comes to a man who has had some money given to him which he wants to put into the Bank, and he pays this five-pound note in with the rest. So after its life it has rest. It never goes out again into the world; but when once it comes back to the Bank it is torn up and destroyed. A great many men are kept at work only tearing up bank-notes; so every day, while many new ones are being made, many old ones are being torn up, and the number keeps about the same. An old woman bought a mattress at a sale, and she thought she would undo it and shake up the stuff inside and make it softer, and when she cut it up she found among the stuffing some bits of paper that looked like bank-notes; but they were little tiny bits not bigger than a sixpence. She took them to the Bank, which examined them, and saw that, though a great deal was missing, there was enough left to show that there had been twelve five-pound notes sewn up inside the mattress. They gave the old woman sixty pounds for them, saying that a bank-note meant a promise on the part of the Bank to pay, and they would keep their promise, however long ago it had been made. So the old woman did a good day's work when she bought that mattress.