And the reply is that he selected a neighborhood in which he knew money to be a scarce commodity, and which all his clients, the high as well as the low, could visit without fear of detection. As has been already said he had clients of various classes. There was one man, for example, who could be found almost any evening in some fashionable club or drawing-room up town and who, on the very morning of which we write, had spent nearly half an hour in that little private office. This man had debts amounting to $25,000, and a father whose fortune of a million he had reasonable hopes of acquiring in due course of time. But his father was a man of the strictest honor, and the son well knew that if he were to hear of his losses at cards and horse racing he would cut him off without a dollar, and leave all his money to a distant cousin whom he had always detested. Situated as he was, this man found the money-lender of Eldridge Street a most convenient friend, and it was an easy matter for the latter to persuade him that for the use of ten or fifteen thousand dollars in cash with which to appease the most importunate of his creditors, he could well afford to give a note for five times the amount payable after the death of his parent. “And even now,” continued the money lender, shaking his head as he handed him a large roll of bills, “I am taking risks that I ought not to take with you or with anybody else. How do I know that you will outlive your father? How do I know that the old man will leave you anything when he dies? How do I know even that he has got anything to leave, or that having it now he will have it a year hence? These are ticklish times, and if I were a prudent business man, without anything of the speculator in me, I would just hang on to what money I’ve got, and let you and the rest of them like you shift for yourselves. I’ve half a mind now,” he added, suddenly, as he tightened his grip on the greenbacks, which had not quite passed out of his hand, “to tear your note up and put the money back in my safe.” But at this threat his visitor snatched the coveted roll from his hand, placed it in his inside pocket, and buttoning his coat up tightly, exclaimed, “Don’t talk to me about the chances you take, Mr. Shylock, when you know perfectly well that I’m good for anything I put my name to, and that it won’t be long before you get your own again with a pound of my flesh into the bargain.” It will be seen from this conversation that the mysterious bearded man had a keen eye for business, and as his little shop was full of customers from morning till night, one may readily believe that he made a large income with very little mental or physical exertion on his part.