"I trust I see you well, my dear friend," murmured Silas Craig, in the fat, oily voice peculiar to him, "and yet," he added, almost affectionately, "I do not think you are looking well--no, decidedly not, you look a little harassed; a little care-worn, as if the business of this life was pressing too much upon you." "I have good need to look harassed and care-worn," answered Gerald Leslie, impatiently. "Come, Mr. Craig, do not let us waste our time upon fine speeches, and sympathy which we cannot either of us expect to feel--I know what you have come here for, and you know that I know it, so why beat about the bush? You have my acceptance, due to-day in your pocket, and you come to claim payment." "You are as proud as ever, Mr. Leslie," said the usurer, an angry gleam shooting out of his small eyes, in spite of the affected smile upon his lips. "Why should I be less proud than ever?" answered the planter, haughtily. "If you call a contempt for falsehood, and a loathing of hypocrisy pride, I am certainly among the proudest." Gerald Leslie knew that every word he uttered was calculated to infuriate Silas Craig, and that, at the moment when he had to ask a favor of him; but the haughty spirit of the planter could less brook to stoop now than ever--the very fact of having to ask this favor stung him to the quick, and urged him on to show his contempt of the man from whom he had to ask it. The usurer sat for some few moments in silence, rubbing his hands slowly, one over the other, and looking furtively at Gerald. "You may ask me why you should be less proud to-day than ever, Mr. Leslie," he said, with a malicious grin. "Shall I tell you why? Because the tables are turned since the day when you passed Silas Craig in the streets of New Orleans, as if he had been one of the slaves on your plantation; when you spurned him as if he had been the dirt beneath your feet. I know what you said of me in those days; I came by my money by crooked ways; I was a rogue; an usurer; my ill-gotten wealth would bring me to the gallows some day. These are the sort of things you said, and I took them quietly enough; for I am of a patient disposition, and I knew my turn would come. It has come. The times are changed since then. My wealth was ill-gotten, was it? You were glad enough to borrow a hundred thousand dollars of it, ill-gotten as it was; and now when I come to-day to ask you for the payment of that money, you take such a high tone that I can only believe you have it ready for me in your cash-box yonder?" It was with a malicious chuckle that he uttered those concluding words; for the crafty wretch well knew the nature of Gerald Leslie, and he had suspected from the first that the money was not forthcoming. "Not one penny of it!" cried the planter; "not one penny of it, Mr. Craig."