Tompkins, the clock manufacturer! Strangely enough, these relics were never brought as silent witnesses against the person who at one time owned them. He was voted by a thoughtful judge a perfectly fit and proper individual to partake of Her Majesty's hospitality for the comfortable period of twenty years for quite a different offence. He used to send notes--not forged ones, but nice, delicate little note-paper notes--to old ladies, threatening them that if they did not send him money he would, at the earliest opportunity, place dynamite on their door-mats, so that the first time they rubbed their boots or goloshes on the cocoa-nut fibre, they would be--well, he wouldn't venture to say where they would be blown to! Our Ti Kroner forger must have been a very versatile genius. The simplicity which is characteristic of not a few of the inhabitants of Britain and the readiness with which some people are taken in are well illustrated by New Scotland Yard's collection of flash notes. Flash notes are generally carried by the members of that fraternity who delight in showing you what is known as the three-card trick, or by persons who wish, for some particular reasons of their own, to inspire your confidence in them, and lead you to trust in their keeping for half an hour or so your money, watch, or what not. [Illustration: MOULD USED FOR FORGED RUSSIAN ROUBLE NOTES.] There are several hundreds of these notes at New Scotland Yard. It is not a punishable offence, by-the-bye, to have them in your possession, or even to print them, but it would go badly with you should you try to pass one as a real note. Now, it is a certain fact that in the case of many of these notes, they were never intended for any wrong purpose, but were merely brought out as a novel and attractive advertisement. It is to be hoped that the writer does not convey the smallest impression to the reader that these notes were in the first place originally issued for anything but a proper and legitimate cause. But your confidence-man, your cardsharper, should any perchance happen to fall in his hands, uses them to suit his own game. They are crisp--just like real bank-notes, and when rustled in the palm of the hand make that delicious sound which cheers the heart and wreathes the face in smiles: they are very nearly the same size, too, of a real "fiver." So they are used for a purpose for which they were never intended, and the confidence-man pulls out of his trousers pocket a handful of--what? Bank-notes? Nothing of the kind. But they look like them. Of course they do. But if you get hold of them yourself you would see that this crisp piece of paper with a big TEN in the left-hand corner was only: "Bank of Engraving. I Promise to Engrave and Print in Letter-press, etc., on Demand for the Sum of Ten Pounds in the First Style of the Art or forfeit the above sum. London, 29 April, 1840. For Self & Co., Bank of Engraving, J. Duck, Fitzroy Square. £ _Ten_."