"And Fetch, if we manage it right, there'll be only $10,000 worth left in circulation, at the time we make the announcement. That will take $10,000 from our total of $425,000, leavin' us still the sum of $415,000. A pretty sum, Fetch." "You may as well strike off that $15,000 for extra expenses,--paragraphs in some of the newspapers,--grand juries, and other little incidents of that kind. O, you'll come out of it with _character_." "Ghoul of the Blerze will assail me, eh?" said Israel, fidgeting in his chair: "He'll talk o' nothin' else than Chow Bank, Muddy Run and Terrapin Hollow, for months to come,--eh, Fetch?" "For years, for years," responded Fetch, "It will be nuts for Ghoul." "And that cursed affair last night!" continued Yorke, as though thinking aloud, "Seventy-one thousand gone at one slap." Fetch looked funnily at his principal from beneath his gold spectacles: "No? It was real then? I thought--" Mr. Yorke abruptly consigned the thoughts of Mr. Fetch to a personage who shall be nameless, and then continued: "It was _real_,--a _bona fide_ robbery. Seventy-one thousand at a slap! By-the-bye, Fetch, has Blossom been here to-night--Blossom the police officer?" "Couldn't get in; too much of a crowd in the street." "I did not intend him to come by the front door. He was to come up the back way,--about this hour--he gave me some hope this afternoon. _That_ was an unfortunate affair last night!" "How they roar! Listen!" said Fetch, bending himself into a listening attitude. And again that ominous sound came from the street without,--the combined groans and curses of six thousand human beings. "Like buffaloes!" quietly remarked Mr. Yorke. "Like demons!" added Mr. Fetch. "Hear 'em." "Was there much fuss to-day, when we suspended, Fetch?" "Quantities of market people, mechanics, widows and servant maids," said the man of business. "I should think you'd stood a pretty good chance of being torn to pieces, if you'd been visible. Had this happened south, you'd have been tarred and feathered. Here you'd only be tore to pieces." A step was heard in the back part of the room, and in a moment BLOSSOM, in his pictorial face and bear-skin over-coat, appeared upon the scene. "What is the matter with your head?" asked Mr. Fetch,--"Is that a handkerchief or a towel?" He pointed to something like a turban, which Poke-Berry Blossom wore under his glossy hat. Blossom sunk sullenly into a chair, without a word. "What's the matter?" exclaimed Yorke, "Have you--" "Suppose you had sixteen inches taken out of yer skull," responded Blossom in a sullen tone, "You'd know what was the matter. Thunder!" he added, "this is a rum world!" "Did you--" again began Yorke, brushing his gray whiskers and fidgeting in his chair. "Yes I did. I tracked 'em to a groggery up town airly this evenin'. I had 'em all alone, to myself, up stairs. I caught the young 'un examinin' the valise--I seed the _dimes_ with my own eyes. I--"