“There is some one about that establishment who is a deep-dyed scoundrel! _You_ have succeeded in getting a situation there lately, I hear,” said the old man with fiery eyes, “and perhaps _you_ might guess his name, sir,!” he added, rising, and looking Phillip full in the face. “When the bank opens in the morning, I shall inform the directors of this beautiful little trick, and seek redress. So you have imitated Charley Warbeck’s knavery already, eh, sir, I find? You will live to repent it.” “It will avail you little to tell the bank of your suspicions, old man,” Phillip answered, with a triumphant scowling look, “for I beg leave to inform you that the South Sea Bank, of which I am a clerk, suspended payment at three o’clock this afternoon! Their notes are exactly worth nothing!” Sir Andrew convulsively clasped his temples; his limbs trembled under him, and he sank upon the sofa, like an inanimate heap of humanity. He groaned despairingly, and most furiously gave vent to his Christian feelings in a volley of oaths. His wife, in tears, was kneeling by his side, and would fain console him. Phillip Redgill, demon-like, and laughing, stalked forth into the street again, triumphant and beggared, yet a villain to the heart’s core! CHAPTER XXIV. CHARLEY WARBECK’S FRIENDS—PRISON LIFE—TRUE LOVE—THE SURPRISE AND PARDON. Mr. Charles Warbeck had now been in confinement for more than three months, and even had become more or less reconciled to his lot. His luxuriant head of hair was cropped so closely, according to “regulations,” by the prison barber that very little capillary substance was left upon his cranium, which now looked very much like a close-worn blacking-brush. His highly-prized bit of whisker, upon which he had bestowed so much fondness and care—his moustacheos, also, which, with the aid of unguent, much combing, brushing, and Hungarian paste, had assumed of yore quite a fierce and military twist—were all now sacrificed to the barbarous razor. And shorn of these hirsute charms, he felt very little sorrow or humiliation when vested and officially enrobed in the zebra-like suit of striped flannel jacket and trousers, which was the apparel of the prison. Although by no means a rogue, he was herded with a gang of ruffians, murderers, swindlers, pickpockets and the very off-scourings of all the earth. And such society, it must be confessed, was a much greater punishment to his sensitive feelings than the confinement, remorse, or a thousand inconveniences and annoyances to which he was daily and hourly subjected. Had he been of pliant nature he might soon have become as utterly depraved as his companions. But his demeanour was so gentle, his manner so mild, and general deportment so humble and resigned, that the prison authorities soon removed him from the bands of ruffians with whom he had hitherto laboured in the quarries and on the public roads.