"Well," murmured the little man mournfully, "one's bondsmen are entitled to some consideration; and then, there is the penitentiary. Courts have a way of sending men there for embezzlement." "You are correct," said Allen, quietly, "and I have not time to go." "At any rate," continued Parks, "there can be no possible danger to you. You are taking no chances. Mr. Mason is a member of the New York bar, and anything you may tell him he dare not reveal. The law would not permit him to do so if he desired. The whole matter would be kept as thoroughly inviolate as though it were made in the confessional. Your objections are all idle. You are a man in a desperate position. You are up to your waist in the quicksand, now, and, at the end of the year, it is bound to close over your head. It is folly to look up at the sky and attempt to ignore this fact. I offer to help you--not from any goodness of heart, understand, but because we can both make a stake in this thing. I need money, and you must have money,--that is the whole thing in a nutshell. Now," said Parks, rising from his chair, "what are you going to do?" "Well," said the Virginian, drawing up his long legs and spreading out his fat hands on the table, "_Colonel Moseby Allen, of the county of Gullmore, will take five cards, if you please_." III. This must be the place," muttered the Virginian, stopping under the electric light and looking up at the big house on the avenue. "That fellow said I would know the place by the copper-studded door, and there it is, as certain as there are back taxes in Gullmore." With that, Colonel Moseby Allen walked up the granite steps and began to grope about in the dark door-way for the electric bell. He could find no trace of this indispensable convenience, and was beginning to lapse into a flow of half-suppressed curses, when he noticed for the first time an ancient silver knocker fastened to the middle of the door. He seized it and banged it vigorously. The Virginian stood in the dark and waited. Finally he concluded that the noise had not been heard, and was about to repeat the signal when the door was flung suddenly open, and a tall man holding a candle in his hand loomed up in the door-way. "I am looking," stammered the southerner, "for one Randolph Mason, an attorney-at-law." "I am Randolph Mason," said the man, thrusting the silver candlestick out before him. "Who are you, sir?" "My name is Allen," answered the southerner, "Moseby Allen, of Gullmore county, West Virginia." "A Virginian," said Mason, "what evil circumstance brings you here?" Then Allen remembered the instructions which Parks had given him so minutely. He took off his hat and passed his hand across his forehead. "Well," he said, "I suppose the same thing that brings the others. We get in and plunge along just as far as we can. Then Fate shuts down the lid of her trap, and we have either to drop off the bridge or come here."