"By Jove, this is discouraging; I'll have to do a very disagreeable thing, very disagreeable thing: make an assignment!"
"Who'd thought John Jenks would ever come to that?" that individual muttered to himself, as he proceeded to his hotel. And ere he reached his plate, at the tea-table, a servant whispered that a gentleman with a message was out in the "office" of the hotel, anxious to see Mr. Jenks.
"Mr. Jenks—John Jenks, I believe, sir?" began the person, as poor Jenks, now on the tapis for more ill news, approached the person in waiting.
"Precisely, that's my name, sir," Jenks responded.
"Then," continued the stranger, "I've disagreeable business with you, Mr. Jenks; I hold your arrest!"
"Good God!" exclaimed Jenks; "my arrest? What for?"
"There's the writ, sir; you can read it."
"A writ? Why, God bless you, man, I don't owe a dollar in the world, but what I can liquidate in ten minutes!"
"Oh, it's not debt, sir; you may see by the writ it's felony!"
If the man had drawn and cocked a revolver at Jenks, the effect upon his nervous system could not have been more startling or powerful. But he recovered his self-possession, and learned with dismay, that he was arrested—yes, arrested as an accessory to a grand scheme of fraud and general villany, on the part of Smith, a conclusion arrived at, by those most interested, upon discovery that Jenks had pronounced Smith "good," and endorsed for him in sums total, enormously, far beyond Jenks' actual ability to make good!