'If what he said be true,' muttered he, 'there must be a traitor. Him I can put my finger on; and first of all, _him_ will I punish; and now, for a trial of that new animal Kornicker. Bah!' Had Mr. Kornicker overheard this allusion to himself, it is scarcely probable that his gratification would have been extreme; for admitting himself and all the rest of the human race, zoologically speaking, to be animals; even then, there was much in the tone of Michael Rust to indicate that Mr. Kornicker belonged to a genus distinct from and inferior to the human species in general; and this was a position against which there is little doubt that Mr. Kornicker would have contended manfully. Without pausing to reflect upon the justice or injustice of his observation, and in truth forgetting that he had made it, Rust took the shortest route to his office, whither, to explain what will follow, it may not be amiss to precede him. From the day on which he had taken Kornicker into his service, he had not been at his office, nor had he met his new clerk, or seen him, or heard from him. In truth, many other matters pressing upon him, prevented his calling there; and although he did not forget that Kornicker was almost a stranger to him, for he forgot nothing, yet knowing that he could do no harm where he was, and that there was little to embezzle or steal, except the door-key, he in a great measure dismissed him from his thoughts, until he required his services. Although this matter dwelt thus lightly on the mind of Rust, it was the source of much profound thought and intense abstraction on the part of Kornicker. He had endeavored to learn something respecting Rust; and even formed an intimacy with 'the desperadoes,' for that purpose; and what little he learned there certainly did not make him more at ease; for even the most desperate of _them_ shook his head, and gave him a friendly caution 'to look sharp;' at the same time adding, though in less refined language, that Rust was 'a small colored man, but hard to masticate.' It was observed, however, that by degrees Mr. Kornicker's abstraction grew less and less, and his spirits rose. At times, unnatural sounds, such as loud laughter, and even songs, were heard to emanate from Rust's hitherto silent room; and in the dusk of the evening, dim figures were seen skulking to and from it; and in the day time, shabby-genteel men loitered carelessly through the entry, and after listening at the key-hole, gave a shrill whistle, which being answered from within, they dove into the room, and disappeared. At times, too, the clinking of knives and forks against crockery was heard from within; and on such occasions, the phantom of the small boy with a white cap on his head was seen to flit up and down the stairs, with a dish in his hand, or a bottle under his arm, always vanishing at Rust's office, or disappearing in the bowels of the refectory below.