"Mr. Lat.i.tat, sir!" cried Quillpen, with desperate resolution, as he saw the great man about to disappear--"please, sir--could you let me have a little money to-night?"

"Why! what do you want of money?" retorted the lawyer. "O! I 'spose you have a host of unpaid bills."

"No, sir; no, sir; that's not it," Simon hastened to say. "I hain't got narry bill standing. I pay as I go. Cash takes the lot!"

"None of your coa.r.s.e, vulgar slang to me!" said Lat.i.tat. "Reserve it for your loose companions. If not to pay bills, what for?"

"Please, sir,--we, that is Mrs. Q. and myself, want to put something in the children's stockings, sir."

"Then put the children's legs in 'em!" said the lawyer with a grin. "I make no payments to be used for any such ridiculous purposes. Good night. Yet stay--take this letter--there's money in it--a large amount--put it in the post-office with your own hands as you go home."

"And you can't let me have a trifle?" gasped Simon.

"Not a cent!" snarled the lawyer; and he slammed the door behind him, and went heavily down the stairs.

"I wonder how it feels to punch a man's head," said Simon, as he stood rooted to the spot where Mr. Lat.i.tat left him. "It's illegal--it's actionable--there are fines and penalties provided by the statute: but it seems as if there were cases that might justify the operation--morally. But then, again--what good would it do to punch his head? Punching his head wouldn't get me money--and if I was to try it, on finding that the licks didn't bring out the cash, I might be tempted to help myself to the cash, and that would be highway robbery; and when the punchee ventured to suggest that, the puncher might be tempted to silence him. O Lord! that's the way these murders in the first degree happen; and I think that I was almost on the point of taking the first step. I really think I look a little like Babe the pirate," added the poor man, glancing at his mild but disturbed features in the gla.s.s; "or like Captain Kidd, or leastways like Country McClusky--a regular bruiser!"

Sitting down before the grate, and stirring it feebly with the poker, he tried to devise some feasible plan for supplying the vacuum in his treasury. He might borrow, but then all his friends were very poor, and particularly hard up--at this particular season of the year. The bull's eye watch might have been "spouted," if he had foreseen this contingency; but every avuncular relative was now at this hour of the night snug abed to a dead certainty. Purchasing on credit was not to be thought of, and the only toy shop which kept open late enough for his purchases, was kept by a man to whom he was totally unknown. Time galloped on, meanwhile, and the half-hour struck.

"I'll slip that letter in the post-office, and then go home," said Simon sorrowfully, rising as he spoke, and grasping his inseparable umbrella.

"Hallo! shipmate! where-away?" cried a hoa.r.s.e voice. And Mr. Quillpen became aware of the presence of an "ancient mariner," enveloped in a very rough dreadnought, and finished off with a large amount of whiskers and tarpaulin.

"I was going home, sir," replied Simon, with the deferential air of a very little to a very big man.

"Ay--going to clap on hatches and deadlights. Well, tell me one thing--where-away may one find one Mr. Lat.i.tat--a sh.o.r.e-going cove, a regular land-shark, d'ye see?"

"This is Mr. Lat.i.tat's office, sir," said Simon.

"Ay--and is he within hail?"

"No, sir, he has gone home."

"Slipped his cable--hey? just my luck! Well, one might snooze comfortably on this here table--mightn't he? You can clear out, and I'll take care of the shop till morning."

"That would be perfectly inadmissible, sir," said Simon, "the idea of a stranger's sleeping here!"

"A stranger!" cried the sailor. "Why, shipmate, do you happen to know who I am? Look at me! Don't you find somewhat of a family likeness to Lucius in my old weather-beaten mug? Why, man-alive, I'm his brother,--his own blood brother! You must a heard him speak of me.

Been cruising round the world in chase of Fortune, but could never overhaul her. Been sick, shipwrecked, and now come back as poor as I went. But Lucius has got enough for both of us. How glad he'll be to see me to-morrow, hey, old Ink-and-tape?"

Simon had his doubts about that matter, but told the sailor to come in the morning, and see.

"That I will," said the tar, "and start him up with a rousing Happy New Year! But I say, shipmate, I don't want to sleep in the watch-house. Have you never a shilling about your trousers?"

Simon answered that he hadn't a cent.

"Why, don't that brother of mine give you good wages?"

"Enormous!" said Simon.

"What becomes of it all?"

"I spend it all--I'm very extravagant," said Simon, shaking his head.

"And then, I'm sorry to say, your brother isn't always punctual in his payments. To-night, for instance, I couldn't get a cent from him."

"Then I tell you what I'd do, shipmate," said the sailor, confidentially. "I'd overhaul some of his letters. Steam will loosen a wafer, and a hot knife-blade, wax. I'd overhaul his money-letters and pay myself. Ha! ha! do you take? Now, that letter you've got in your fin, my boy, looks woundy like a dokiment chock full of shinplasters.

What do you say to making prize of 'em? wouldn't it be a jolly go?"

"Stand off!" said Simon, a.s.suming a heavy round ruler and a commanding att.i.tude. "Don't you come anigh me, or there'll be a case of justifiable homicide here. How dare you counsel me to commit a robbery on your own brother? I wonder you ain't ashamed to look me in the face."

"A chap as has cruised as many years as I have in the low lat.i.tudes ain't afraid to look any body in the face," answered the "ancient mariner," grimly. "I made you a fair offer, shipmate, and you rejected it like a long-sh.o.r.e jacka.s.s as you are. Good night to ye."

Much to his relief, the sailor took himself off, and Simon, after locking and double locking his door, went to the post-office and deposited the letter with which he had been intrusted. As he lived a great way up on the Neck, he did not reach home until after all the clocks of the city had struck twelve, so that he was able to surprise his little wife, who was sitting up for him, with a "Happy New Year!"

He cast a rueful eye at the line of stockings hung along the mantel-piece in the sitting room, and then sorrowfully announced to his wife his failure to obtain money of Mr. Lat.i.tat.

"There'll be nothing for the stockings, Meg," said he, "unless what the poor children put in ours."

"I am very sorry," said his wife, who bore the announcement much better than he antic.i.p.ated; "but we'll have a happy New Year for all that."

Simon's roasted potatoes were completely charred, he had been detained so late; but there was a little meal in the centre of each, and charcoal is not at all unhealthy. He went to bed, and in spite of his cares, slept the sleep of the just.

A confused babbling awoke him at daylight. Master Bobby was standing on his stomach, Miss Chiffy was seated nearly on his head, and baby was crowing in its cradle. Happy New Years and kisses were exchanged.

"O, dear papa and mamma!" cried Bobby, "what a beautiful horse I found in my stocking!"

"And what a beautiful wax doll, with eyes that move, in mine," said Chiffy,--"and such a splendid rattle and coral in baby's. Now, pray go down and see what there is in yours."

"This is some of your work, little woman," whispered Simon to his wife. But the little woman denied it emphatically. Much mystified, he hurried down to the breakfast room. The children had made the usual offering of very hard and highly-colored sugar plums; but in each of the two large stockings, stowed away at the bottom, was a roll of bank notes, five hundred dollars in each.

"Somebody wants to ruin us!" cried Simon, bursting into tears. "This is stolen money, and they want to lay it on to us."

"All I know about it," said Mrs. Quillpen, "is, that last night, just before you came home, a sailor man came here with all these things, and said they were for us, and made me promise to put them in the stockings, as he directed, and say nothing about his visit to you."

"A sailor!" cried Simon--"I have it! I think I know who it is. Good by--I'll be back to breakfast directly."

Simon ran to the office, and found, as he antic.i.p.ated, Mr. Lat.i.tat there before him.

"A happy New Year to you, sir," said he. "Have you seen your brother?"

"I have not," replied Mr. Lat.i.tat.

Simon then told him all that happened on the preceding night; the apparition of the sailor,--the temptation,--the money found in the stockings, in proof of which he showed the thousand dollars, and stating his fears that they had been stolen, offered to deposit the sum in his employer's hands.

"Keep 'em, shipmate; they were meant for you!" exclaimed Mr. Lat.i.tat, suddenly and queerly, a.s.suming the very voice and look of the nautical brother of the preceding evening.

While Simon stared his eyes out of his head, Mr. Lat.i.tat informed him that he had no brother--that he had disguised himself for the purpose of putting his clerk's long-tried fidelity to a final test, and, that sustained triumphantly, had rewarded him in the manner we have seen.

He told how, disgusted in early life by the treachery and ingrat.i.tude of friends and relations who had combined to ruin him, he had become a misanthrope and miser; how the spectacle of Simon's disinterested fidelity, rigid sense of honor, self-denial and cheerfulness, had won back his better nature; and he wound off, as he shook Quillpen warmly by the hand, by announcing that he had raised his salary to twelve hundred dollars per annum.