"I trusted you, as an honest man, downstairs, and I find you,

like a thief, up here," returned the doctor, with a
self-satisfied smile at the neatness of his own retort. "No," he

continued, relapsing into soliloquy: "there is risk every way;
but the least risk perhaps is to shoot him."

"Wrong," said I. "There are relations of mine who have a
pecuniary interest in my life. I am the main condition of a

contingent reversion in their favor. If I am missed, I shall be
inquired after." I have wondered since at my own coolness in the

face of the doctor's pistol; but my life depended on my keeping
my self-possession, and the desperate nature of the situation

lent me a desperate courage.
"How do I know you are not lying?" he asked.

"Have I not spoken the truth, hitherto?"
Those words made him hesitate. He lowered the pistol slowly to

his side. I began to breathe freely.
"Trust me," I repeated. "If you don't believe I would hold my

tongue about what I have seen here, for your sake, you may be
certain that I would for--"

"For my daughter's," he interposed, with a sarcastic smile.
I bowed with all imaginable cordiality. The doctor waved his

pistol in the air contemptuously.
"There are two ways of making you hold your tongue," he said.

"The first is shooting you; the second is making a felon of you.
On consideration, after what you have said, the risk in either

case seems about equal. I am naturally a humane man; your family
have done me no injury; I will not be the cause of their losing

money; I won't take your life, I'll have your character. We are
all felons on this floor of the house. You have come among

us--you shall be one of us. Ring that bell."
He pointed with the pistol to a bell-handle behind me. I pulled

it in silence.
Felon! The word has an ugly sound--a very ugly sound. But,

considering how near the black curtain had been to falling over
the adventurous drama of my life, had I any right to complain of

the prolongation of the scene, however darkly it might look at
first? Besides, some of the best feelings of our common nature

(putting out of all question the value which men so unaccountably
persist in setting on their own lives), impelled me, of

necessity, to choose the alternative of felonious existence in
preference to that of respectable death. Love and Honor bade me

live to marry Alicia; and a sense of family duty made me shrink
from occasioning a loss of three thousand pounds to my

affectionate sister. Perish the far-fetched scruples which would
break the heart of one lovely woman, and scatter to the winds the

pin-money of another!
"If you utter one word in contradiction of anything I say when my

workmen come into the room," said the doctor, uncocking his
pistol as soon as I had rung the bell, "I shall change my mind

about leaving your life and taking your character. Remember that;
and keep a guard on your tongue."

The door opened, and four men entered. One was an old man whom I
had not seen before; in the other three I recognized the

workman-like footman, and the two sinister artisans whom I had
met at the house-gate. They all started, guiltily enough, at

seeing me.
"Let me introduce you," said the doctor, taking me by the arm.

"Old File and Young File, Mill and Screw--Mr. Frank Softly. We
have nicknames in this workshop, Mr. Softly, derived humorously

from our professional tools and machinery. When you have been
here long enough, you will get a nickname, too. Gentlemen," he

continued, turning to the workmen, "this is a new recruit, with a
knowledge of chemistry which will be useful to us. He is

perfectly well aware that the nature of our vocation makes us
suspicious of all newcomers, and he, therefore, desires to give

you practical proof that he is to be depended on, by making
half-a-crown immediately, and sending the same up, along with our

handiwork, directed in his own handwriting, to our estimable
correspondents in London. When you have all seen him do this of

his own free will, and thereby put his own life as completely
within the power of the law as we have put ours, you will know

that he is really one of us, and will be under no apprehensions
for the future. Take great pains with him, and as soon as he

turns out a tolerably neat article, from the simple flatted
plates, under your inspection, let me know. I shall take a few

hours' repose on my camp-bed in the study, and shall be found
there whenever you want me."

He nodded to us all round in the most friendly manner, and left
the room.

I looked with considerable secret distrust at the four gentlemen
who were to instruct me in the art of making false coin. Young

File was the workman-like footman; Old File was his father; Mill
and Screw were the two sinister artisans. The man of the company

whose looks I liked least was Screw. He had wicked little
twinkling eyes--and they followed me about treacherously whenever

I moved. "You and I, Screw, are likely to quarrel," I thought to
myself, as I tried vainly to stare him out of countenance.

I entered on my new and felonious functions forthwith. Resistance
was useless, and calling for help would have been sheer insanity.

It was midnight; and, even supposing the windows had not been
barred , the house was a mile from any human habitation.

Accordingly, I abandoned myself to fate with my usual
magnanimity. Only let me end in winning Alicia, and I am resigned

to the loss of whatever small shreds and patches of
respectability still hang about me--such was my philosophy. I

wish I could have taken higher moral ground with equally
consoling results to my own feelings.

The same regard for the well-being of society which led me to
abstain from entering into particulars on the subject of Old

Master-making, when I was apprenticed to Mr. Ishmael Pickup, now
commands me to be equallydiscreet on the kindred subject of

Half-Crown-making, under the auspices of Old File, Young File,
Mill, and Screw.

Let me merely record that I was a kind of machine in the hands of
these four skilledworkmen. I moved from room to room, and from

process to process, the creature of their directing eyes and
guiding hands. I cut myself, I burned myself, I got speechless

from fatigue, and giddy from want of sleep. In short, the sun of
the new day was high in the heavens before it was necessary to

disturb Doctor Dulcifer. It had absolutely taken me almost as
long to manufacture a half-a-crown feloniously as it takes a

respectable man to make it honestly. This is saying a great deal;
but it is literally true for all that.

Looking quite fresh and rosy after his night's sleep, the doctor
inspected my coin with the air of a schoolmaster examining a

little boy's exercise; then handed it to Old File to put the
finished touches and correct the mistakes. It was afterward

returned to me. My own hand placed it in one of the rouleaux of
false half-crowns; and my own hand also directed the spurious

coin, when it had been safely packed up, to a certain London
dealer who was to be on the lookout for it by the next night's

mail. That done, my initiation was so far complete.
"I have sent for your luggage, and paid your bill at the inn,"

said the doctor; "of course in your name. You are now to enjoy
the hospitality that I could not extend to you before. A room

upstairs has been prepared for you. You are not exactly in a
state of confinement; but, until your studies are completed, I

think you had better not interrupt them by going out."
"A prisoner!" I exclaimed aghast.

"Prisoner is a hard word," answered the doctor. "Let us say, a
guest under surveillance."

"Do you seriously mean that you intend to keep me shut up in this
part of the house, at your will and pleasure?" I inquired, my

heart sinking lower and lower at every word I spoke.