'Jacob Rhoneland, one word.'

'Not a syllable!' said the old man, grasping his heavy cane, and his face becoming purple with anger: 'viper! begone! If you darken my doors one moment longer, I'll fling you into the street!'

'Good-by, Jacob,' said Rust; but not another word did he utter, as he left the house. His face was ashy pale; his features pinched and sharp; and he gnawed his lip until the blood came from it. Regardless of his appearance; with his long locks hanging in tangled flakes about his face, he hurried on. Dead and corpse-like as his features were, never was a fiercer spirit at work, to give life and energy to human frame; never was there a stronger concentration of dark passions in a human heart. His pace was quick and firm; there was no loitering; no pausing at corners, to think; no sign of irresolution. Darting along the street where the old man lived, and striking into one of the wider cross-streets of the city, he followed it until it brought him into Broadway. This he crossed, and plunged into that labyrinth of narrow streets which run between that and the Bowery. Threading them, with the ready step of one familiar with their turns and windings, he neither paused to inquire his direction, nor to read the sign-boards; but even in the darkest and dreariest corners, his knowledge seemed certain and accurate. The twilight had darkened into night, and the streets were narrow; and as he proceeded in the direction of the more fated parts of the city, dim figures, which like bats were shrouded in holes and dark hiding-places in the day time, were beginning to flit about, yet he felt no hesitation nor fear. In the most gloomy and blighted of all these places, he paused, cast a quick suspicious glance about him, to see that none watched him, and then darted up an alley between two houses, so ruined and sagged that their gables met over it like a gothic arch. Groping his way along, he came to a door at the foot of a flight of stairs which terminated the passage. He did not pause to knock; but pulling a string, opened it, and ascended a pitch-dark staircase, which in like manner was terminated at the upper end by a door. At this he knocked loudly. He was answered by a gruff voice which inquired:

'Is that you, Joe?'

'No,' replied Rust.

'Well, if you ain't Joe, who are you? If you ain't got a name, peg away; for blow me, if I open till I hear it.'

There was a noise, as if the speaker, in conclusion of his observation, drew a chair or bench along the floor, and seated himself.

'Come Bill,' said another voice, 'this won't do. You'd better open it.'

A muttering from Bill showed that he thought otherwise; but the person who had spoken, apparently not heeding his disapprobation, got up and opened the door, giving to Rust as he did so a full view of the interior of the room.

At a table sat a man with coarse red hair, and a beard of several days' growth. He was a brawny fellow, six feet high, with a cast in one eye, which seemed to have been injured by a deep gash; the scar of which still remained, commencing on the very eye-lid, crossing one cheek, and his nose, and giving an air of sternness to features which needed not this addition, to express much that was bad. His companion, who had opened the door, was a man of smaller build, with broad, square shoulders, dark sharp eyes, narrow forehead, and overhanging brows, and a thin, tremulous lip; and though possessed of less physical strength than his comrade, looked much the most dangerous man of the two.