Thus it happened that about seven o'clock on the eventful Friday, Carper Harris left Baltimore for New York. He carried a small hand-bag containing twenty thousand dollars, with which he was to buy foreign exchange. Arriving at the depot he had checked his luggage and had gone into the chair-car with only his overcoat and the little hand-bag. He laid his overcoat across the back of the seat and set the little satchel down in the seat beside him. He had been particularly careful that the money should be constantly guarded, and for that reason he had attempted to keep his hand on the handle of the bag during the entire trip, although he was convinced that there was no danger or risk of any consequence, for the reason that no one would suspect that the satchel contained cash. When he arrived in New York he had gone directly to his hotel and asked to be shown up to his room. It was his intention to look over the money carefully and see that it was all right, after which he would have it placed in one of the deposit boxes in the hotel safe until morning. When Harris set the hand-bag down on the table under the light, after the servant had left the room, something about its general appearance struck his attention, and he bent down to examine it closely. As he did so his heart seemed to leap into his throat, and the cold perspiration burst out on his forehead and began to run down his face in streams. The satchel before him on the table was not the one in which he had placed the money in Baltimore, and with which he had left the counting-house of Beaumont, Milton, & Company. The young man attempted to insert the key in the lock of the satchel, but his hand trembled so that he could not do it, and in an agony of fear he threw down the keys and wrenched the satchel open. His great fear was only too well founded. The satchel contained a roll of newspapers. For a moment Carper Harris stood dazed and dumbfounded by his awful discovery; then he sank down in a heap on the floor and covered his face with his hands. Of all the dreaded calamities that Fate could have sent, this was the worst. All that he had hoped for and labored for was gone by a stroke,--wiped out ruthlessly, and by no act or wrong of his. The man sat on the floor like a child, and literally wrung his hands in anguish, and strove to realize all the terrible results that would follow in the wake of this unforeseen calamity.