In the history of crime, as in all other histories, there is one great
epoch by which minor dates are arranged and defined. In a list of
remarkable events, one remarkable event more remarkable than the last,
is the standard around which all smaller circumstances are grouped.
Whatever happens in Mohammedan annals, is set down as having occurred
so many years after the flight of the Prophet; in the records of London
commerce a great fraud or a great failure is mentioned as having
come to light so many months after the flight of Rowland Stephenson.
Sporting men date from remarkable struggles for the Derby prize; and
refer to 1840 as “Bloomsbury’s year.” The highwayman of old dated from
Dick Turpin’s last appearance on the fatal stage at Tyburn turnpike. In
like manner, the standard epoch in the annals of Bank Note Forgery, is
the year 1797, when (on the 25th of February) one pound notes were put
into circulation instead of golden guineas; or, to use the City idiom,
“cash payments were suspended.”
At that time the Bank of England note was no better in appearance--had
not improved as a work of art--since the days of Vaughan, Mathieson,
and Old Patch; it was just as easily imitated, and the chances of the
successful circulation of counterfeits were increased a thousand-fold.
Up to 1793 no notes had been issued even for sums so small as five
pounds. Consequently all the Bank paper then in use, passed through the
hands and under the eyes of the affluent and educated, who could more
readily distinguish the false from the true. Hence, during the fourteen
years which preceded the non-golden and small-note era, there were only
three capital convictions for the crime. When, however, the Bank of
England notes became “common and popular,” a prodigious quantity--to
complete the quotation--was also made “base,” and many persons were
hanged for concocting them.
To a vast number of the humbler orders, Bank Notes were a rarity and a
“sight.” Many had never seen such a thing before they were called upon
to take one or two pound notes in exchange for small merchandise, or
their own labour. How were they to judge? How were they to tell a good
from a spurious note?--especially when it happened that the officers
of the Bank themselves, were occasionally mistaken, so complete
and perfect were the imitations then afloat. There cannot be much
doubt that where one graphic rascal was found out, ten escaped. They
snapped their fingers at the executioner, and went on enjoying their
beefsteaks and porter; their winter treats to the play; their summer
excursions to the suburban tea-gardens; their fashionable lounges at
Tunbridge Wells, Bath, Margate, and Ramsgate; doing business with
wonderful unconcern and “face” all along their journeys. These usually
expensive, but to them profitable enjoyments, were continually coming
to light at the trials of the lesser rogues who undertook the issue
department; for, from the ease with which close imitation was effected,
the manufacture was more readily completed than the uttering. The
fraternity and sisterhood of utterers played many parts, and were
banded in strict compact with the forgers. Some were turned loose into
fairs and markets, in all sorts of appropriate disguises. Farmers, who
could hardly distinguish a field of standing wheat from a field of
barley: Butchers who never wielded more deadly weapons than two-prong
forks: Country boys with Cockney accents, bought gingerbread, and
treated their so-called sweethearts with ribbons and muslins, all by
the interchange of false “flimseys.” The better mannered disguised
themselves as ladies and gentlemen, paid their losings at cards or
hazard, or their tavern bills, their milliners, and coachmakers, in
motley money composed of part real and part base bank paper. Some
went about in the cloak of the Samaritan, and generously subscribed
to charities wherever they saw a chance of changing a bad “five” for
three or four good “ones.” Ladies of sweet disposition went about doing
good among the poor; personally inquired into distress, relieved it
by sending out a daughter or a son to a neighbouring shop for change;
and left five shillings for present necessities, walking off with
fifteen. So openly--in spite of the gallows--was forgery carried on,
that whoever chose to turn utterer found no difficulty in getting a
stock-in-trade to commence with. Indeed, in the days of highwaymen,
no travelling gentleman’s pocket or valise was considered properly
furnished without a few forged notes wherewith to satisfy the demands
of the members of the “High Toby.” This offence against the laws of the
road, however, soon became too common, and wayfarers who were stopped
and rifled had to pledge their sacred words of honour that their notes
were the genuine promises of Abraham Newland; and that their watches
were not of the factory of Mr. Pinchbeck.
With temptations so strong, it is no wonder that the forgers’ trade
flourished, with only an occasional check from the strong arm of the
law. It followed, therefore, that from the issue of small notes in
February 1797, to the end of 1817--twenty years--there were no fewer
than eight hundred and seventy prosecutions connected with Bank Note
Forgery, in which there were only one hundred and sixty acquittals, and
upwards of three hundred executions! 1818 was the culminating point
of the crime. In the first three months there were no fewer than one
hundred and twenty-eight prosecutions by the Bank; and by the end of
that year, two-and-thirty individuals had been hanged for Note Forgery.
So far from this appalling series of examples having any effect in
checking the progress of the crime, it is proved that at, and after
that very time, base notes were poured into the Bank at the rate of
_a hundred a day_!
The enormous number of undetected forgeries afloat, may be estimated
by the fact, that from the 1st of January 1812, to the 10th April
1818, one hundred and thirty-one thousand three hundred and thirty-one
pieces of paper were ornamented by the Bank officers with the word
“Forged”--upwards of one hundred and seven thousand of them were
one-pound counterfeits.
Intrinsically, it would appear from an Hibernian view of the case,
then, that bad notes were nearly as good, (except not merely having
been manufactured at the Bank), as good ones. So thoroughly and
completely did some of them resemble the authorised engraving of the
Bank, that it was next to impossible to distinguish the false from the
true. Countless instances, showing rather the skill of the forger than
the want of vigilance in Bank officials, could be brought forward.
Respectable persons were constantly taken into custody on a charge of
uttering forgeries, imprisoned for days and then liberated. A close
scrutiny, proving that the accusations were made upon genuine paper. In
September, 1818, Mr. A. Burnett, of Portsmouth, had the satisfaction
of having a note which had passed through his hands returned to him
from the Bank of England with the base mark upon it. Satisfied of
its genuineness, he re-inclosed it to the cashier, and demanded its
payment. By return of post he received the following letter:
“_Bank of England, 16 Sept., 1818._
“Sir,--I have to acknowledge your letter to Mr. Hase, of the 13th
inst. inclosing a one pound note, and, in answer thereto, I beg leave
to acquaint you, that, on inspection it appears to be a genuine Note
of the Bank of England; I therefore, agreeably to your request,
inclose you one of the like value, No. 26,276, dated 22nd August, 1818.
“I am exceedingly sorry, Sir, that such an unusual oversight should
have occurred to give you so much trouble, which I trust your candour
will induce you to excuse when I assure you that the unfortunate
mistake has arisen entirely out of the hurry and multiplicity of
business.
“I am, Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
A. BURNETT, ESQ. J. RIPPON.
7 Belle Vue Terrace.
Southsea, near Portsmouth.”
A more extraordinary case is on record. A note was traced to the
possession of a tradesman, which had been pronounced by the Bank
Inspectors to have been forged. The man would not give it up and
was taken before a magistrate, charged with “having a note in his
possession, well knowing it to be forged.” He was committed to prison
on evidence of the Bank Inspector; but was afterwards released on
bail to appear when called on. He was _not_ called on; and, at
the expiration of twelvemonths (having kept the note all that time),
he brought an action against the Bank for false imprisonment. On the
trial the note was proved to be genuine! and the plaintiff was awarded
damages of one hundred pounds.
It is a fact sufficiently dreadful that three hundred and thirty
human lives should have been sacrificed in twenty-one years; but when
we relate a circumstance which admits the merest probability that
some--even one--of those lives may have been sacrificed in innocence
of the offence for which they suffered, the consideration becomes
appalling.
Some time after the frequency of the crime had, in other respects
subsided, there was a sort of bloody assize at Haverfordwest, in Wales;
several prisoners were tried for forging and uttering, and thirteen
were convicted; chiefly on the evidence of Mr. Christmas, a Bank
Inspector, who swore positively, in one case, that the document named
in the indictment “was not an impression from a Bank of England plate;
was not printed on the paper with the ink or water-mark of the Bank;
neither was it in the handwriting of the signing clerk.” Upon this
testimony the prisoner, together with twelve participators in similar
crimes, were condemned to be hanged!
The morning after the trial, Mr. Christmas was leaving his lodging,
when an acquaintance stepped up and asked him, as a friend, to give
his opinion on a note he had that morning received. It was a bright
day; Mr. Christmas put on his spectacles, and carefully scrutinised
the document in a business-like and leisurely manner. He pronounced it
to be forged. The gentleman, a little chagrined, brought it away with
him to town. It is not a little singular that he happened to know Mr.
Burnett, of Portsmouth, whom he accidentally met, and to whom he showed
the note. Mr. Burnett was evidently a capital judge of Bank paper. He
said nothing, but slipping his hand into one pocket, handed to the
astonished gentleman full change, and put the note into another. “It
cannot be a good note,” exclaimed the latter, “for my friend Christmas
told me at Haverfordwest that it is a forgery!” But as Mr. Burnett
had backed his opinion to the amount of twenty shillings he declined
to retract it; and lost no time in writing to Mr. Henry Hase (Abraham
Newland’s successor) to test its accuracy.
It was lucky that he did so; for this little circumstance saved
thirteen lives!
Mr. Christmas’s co-inspectors at the Bank of England actually
reversed his non-official judgment that the note was a forgery. It
was officially pronounced to be a good note; yet upon the evidence
of Mr. Christmas as regards other notes, the thirteen human beings
at Haverfordwest were trembling at the foot of the gallows. It was
promptly and cogently argued that as Mr. Christmas’s judgment had
failed him in the deliberate examination of one note, it might also err
as to others, and the convicts were respited.
The converse of this sort of mistake often happened. Bad notes were
pronounced to be genuine by the Bank. Early in January, 1818, a
well-dressed woman entered the shop of Mr. James Hammond, of 40,
Bishopsgate Street Without, and having purchased three pounds worth
of goods, tendered in payment a ten-pound note. There was something
hesitating and odd in her manner; and, although Mr. Hammond could
see nothing the matter with the note, yet he was ungallant enough to
suspect--from the uncomfortable demeanour of his customer--that all was
not right. He hoped she was not in a hurry, for he had no change; he
must send to a neighbour for it. He immediately dispatched his shopman
to the most affluent of all his neighbours--to her of Threadneedle
Street. The delay occasioned the lady to remark, “I suppose he is gone
to the Bank?” Mr. Hammond having answered in the affirmative, engaged
his customer in conversation, and they freely discussed the current
topics of the day; till the young man returned with ten one pound Bank
of England Notes. Mr. Hammond felt a little remorse at having suspected
his patroness; who departed with the purchases with the utmost
despatch. She had not been gone half an hour before two gentlemen
rushed into the shop in a state of grievous chagrin; one was the Bank
clerk who had changed the note. He begged Mr. Hammond would be good
enough to give him another for it. “Why?” asked the puzzled shopkeeper.
“Why, Sir,” replied the distressed clerk, “it is forged!” Of course his
request was not complied with. The clerk declared that his dismissal
was highly probable; but Mr. Hammond was inexorable.
The arguments in favour of death punishments never fail so signally
as when brought to the test of the scaffold and its effect on Bank
Forgeries. When these were most numerous, although from twenty
to thirty persons were put to death in one year, the gallows was
never deprived of an equal share of prey during the next. As long
as simulated notes could be passed with ease, and detected with
difficulty, the Old Bailey had no terrors for clever engravers and
dexterous imitators of the hieroglyphic autographs of the Bank of
England signers.
At length public alarm at the prevalence of forgeries, and the
difficulty of knowing them as such, arose to the height of demanding
some sort of relief. In 1819 a committee was appointed by the
Government to enquire into the best means of prevention. One hundred
and eighty projects were submitted. They mostly consisted of intricate
designs such as rendered great expense necessary to imitate. But none
were adopted, for the obvious reason that ever so indifferent and
easily executed imitation of an elaborate note is quite sufficient
to deceive an uneducated eye; as had been abundantly proved in the
instance of the Irish “black note.” The Bank had not been indifferent
or idle on the subject, for it had spent some hundred thousand
pounds in projects for inimitable notes. At last--not long before
the Commission was appointed--they were on the eve of adopting an
ingenious and costly mechanism for printing a note so precisely alike
on both sides as to appear as one impression, when one of the Bank
printers imitated it exactly by the simple contrivance of two plates
and a hinge. This may serve as a sample of the other one hundred and
seventy-nine projects.
Neither the gallows, nor expensive and elaborate works of art, having
been found effectual in preventing forgery, the true expedient for at
least lessening the crime was adopted in 1821:--the issue of small
notes was wholly discontinued, and sovereigns were brought into
circulation. The forger’s trade was nearly annihilated. Criminal
returns inform us that during the nine years after the resumption of
gold currency the number of convictions for offences having reference
to the Bank of England notes were less than one hundred, and the
executions only eight. This clinches the argument against the efficacy
of the gallows. In 1830 death punishments were repealed for all minor
offences, and, although the cases of Bank Note Forgeries slightly
increased for a time, yet there is no reason to suppose that they are
greater now than they were between 1821 and 1830.
At present, Bank paper forgeries are not numerous. One of the latest
was that of the twenty pound note, of which about sixty specimens found
their way into the Bank. It was well executed in Belgium by foreigners,
and the impressions were passed among the Change-agents in various
towns in France and the Netherlands. The speculation did not succeed;
for the notes got into, and were detected at, the Bank, a little too
soon to profit the schemers much.
The most considerable frauds now perpetrated are not forgeries; but are
done upon the plan of the highwayman mentioned in our first chapter.
In order to give currency to stolen or lost notes which have been
stopped at the Bank (lists of which are supplied to every banker in the
country), the numbers and dates are fraudulently altered. Some years
since, a gentleman, who had been receiving a large sum of money at the
Bank, was robbed of it in an omnibus. The notes gradually came in, but
all were altered. The last was one for five hundred pounds, dated the
12th March, 1846, and numbered 32109. On the Monday (3rd June) after
the last “Derby Day,” amid the _twenty-five thousand pieces_ of
paper that were examined by the Bank Inspectors, there was one note
for five hundred pounds, dated 12th March, 1848, and numbered 32409.
At that note an inspector suddenly arrested his rapid examination of
the pile of which it was one. He scrutinised it for a minute, and
pronounced it “altered.” On the next day, that same note, with a
perfect one for five hundred pounds, is shown to us with an intimation
of the fact. We look at every letter; we trace every line; follow
every flourish: we hold both up to the light; we undulate our visuals
with the waves of the water-mark. We confess that we cannot pronounce
decisively; but we have an opinion derived from a slight “goutiness”
in the fine stroke of the figure 4 that No. 32409 is the forgery!
so indeed it was. Yet the Bank Inspector had picked it out from the
hundred genuine notes as instantaneously--pounced upon it as rapidly,
as if it had been printed with green ink upon card-board.
This then, O gentlemen forgers and sporting note alterers, is the
kind of odds which is against you. A minute investigation of the note
assured us of your exceeding skill and ingenuity; but it also convinced
us of the superiority of the detective ordeal which you have to blind
and to pass. In this instance you had followed the highwayman’s plan,
and had put with great cunning, the additional marks to the 1 in 32109
to make it into a 4. To hide the scraping out of the top or serif of
the figure 1--to make the angle from which to draw the fine line of the
4--you had artfully inserted with a pen the figures “£16 16” as if that
sum had been received from a person bearing a name that you had written
above. You had with extraordinary neatness cut out the “6” from 1846,
and filled up the hole with an 8 abstracted from some note of lesser
value. You had fitted it with remarkable precision; only you had not
got the 8 quite upright enough to pass the shrewd glance of the Bank
Inspector.
We have seen a one-pound note made up of refuse pieces of a hundred
other Bank notes, and pasted on a piece of paper (like a note
that had been accidentally torn), so as to present an entire and
_passable_ whole.
To alter with a pen a 1 into a 4 is an easy task--to cut out the
numeral from the _date_ in one note and insert it into another,
needs only a tyro in paper-cutting; but to change the special
_number_ by which each note is distinguished, is a feat only
second in impossibility to trumping every court-card of every suit
six times running in a rubber of whist. Yet we have seen a note so
cleverly altered by this expedient, that it was actually paid by the
Bank cashiers. If the reader will take a Bank note out of his purse,
and examine its “number,” he will at once appreciate the combination
of chances required to find, on any other note, any other figure that
shall displace any one of the numerals so as to avoid detection. The
“number” of every Bank note is printed twice on one line--first, on
the words “I promise,” secondly, on the words, “or bearer.” Sometimes
the figures cover the whole of those words; sometimes they only partly
obscure them. No. 99066 now lies before us. Suppose we wished to
substitute the “0” of another note for the first “9” of the one now
under our eye; we see that the “9” covers a little bit of the “P,”
and intersects in three places the “r,” in “Promise.” Now, to give
this alteration the smallest chance, we must look through hundreds of
other notes till we find an “0” which not only covers a part of the
“P” and intersects the “r” in three places, but in precisely _the
same_ places as the “9” on our note does; else the strokes of those
letters would not meet when the “0” was let in, and instant detection
would ensue. But even then the job would only be half done. The second
initial “9” stands upon the “or” in “or bearer,” and we should have to
investigate several hundred more notes, to find an “0” that intersected
that little word exactly in the same manner, and then let it in with
such mathematical nicety, that not the hundredth part of a hair’s
breadth of the transferred paper should fail to range with the rest of
the letters and figures on the altered note; to say nothing of hiding
the joins in the paper. This is the triumph of ambidexterity; it is a
species of patch-work far beyond the most sublime achievements of “Old
Patch” himself.
Time has proved that the steady perseverance of the Bank--despite
the most furious clamour--in gradually improving their original note
and thus preserving those most essential qualities, simplicity and
uniformity--has been a better preventive to forgery than any one of the
hundreds of plans, pictures, complications, chemicals, and colours,
which have been forced upon the Directors’ notice. Whole-note forgery
is nearly extinct. The lives of Eminent Forgers need only wait for a
single addendum; for only one man is left who can claim superiority
over Mathieson, and he was, unfortunately for the Bank of England,
born a little too late, to trip up his heels, or those of the late Mr.
Charles Price. He can do everything with a note that the patchers,
and alterers, and simulators, can do, and a great deal more. Flimsy
as a Bank note is to a proverb, he can split it into three perfect
continuous, flat, and even leaves. He has forged more than one design
sent into the Bank as an infallible preventive to forgery. You may, if
you like, lend him a hundred pound note: he will undertake to discharge
every trace of ink from it, and return it to you perfectly uninjured
and a perfect blank. We are not quite sure that if you were to burn
a Bank note and hand him the black cinders, that he would not bleach
it, and join it, and conjure it back again into a very good-looking,
payable piece of currency. But we _are_ sure of the truth of the
following story, which we have from our friend the transcendant forger
referred to; and who is no other than the chief of the Engraving and
Engineering department of the Bank of England:
Some years ago--in the days of the thirty-shilling notes--a certain
Irishman saved up the sum of eighty-seven pounds ten, in notes of the
Bank of Ireland. As a sure means of securing this valuable property,
he put it in the foot of an old stocking, and buried it in his garden,
where Bank note paper couldn’t fail to keep dry, and to come out, when
wanted, in the best preservation.
After leaving his treasure in this excellent place of deposit for some
months, it occurred to the depositor to take a look at it, and see how
it was getting on. He found the stocking-foot apparently full of the
fragments of mildewed and broken mushrooms. No other shadow of a shade
of eighty-seven pounds ten.
In the midst of his despair, the man had the sense not to disturb the
ashes of his property. He took the stocking-foot in his hand, posted
off to the Bank in Dublin, entered it one morning as soon as it was
opened, and, staring at the clerk with a most extraordinary absence of
all expression in his face, said:
“Ah, look at that, Sir! Can ye do anything for me?”
“What do you call this?” said the clerk.
“Eighty-sivin pound ten, praise the Lord, as I’m a sinner! Ohone! There
was a twenty as was paid to me by Mr. Phalim O’Dowd, Sir, and a ten
as was changed by Pat Reilly, and a five as was owen by Tim; and Ted
Connor, ses he to ould Phillips--”
“Well! Never mind old Phillips. You have done it, my friend!”
“Oh Lord, Sir, and it’s done it I have, most com-plate! Oh, good luck
to you, Sir, can you do nothing for me?”
“I don’t know what’s to be done with such a mess as this. Tell me,
first of all, what you put in the stocking, you unfortunate blunderer?”
“Oh yes, Sir, and tell you true as if it was the last word I had to
spake entirely, and the Lord be good to you, and Ted Connor ses he to
ould Phillips, regarden the five as was owen by Tim, and not includen
of the ten which was changed by Pat Reilly--”
“You didn’t put Pat Reilly, or ould Phillips into the stocking, did
you?”
“Is it Pat or ould Phillips as was ever the valy of eighty-sivin pound
ten, lost and gone, and includen the five as was owen by Tim, and Ted
Connor--”
“Then tell me what you _did_ put in the stocking, and let me
take it down. And then hold your tongue, if you can, and go your way,
and come back to-morrow.”
The particulars of the notes were taken, without any reference to ould
Phillips: who could not, however, by any means be kept out of the
story; and the man departed.
When he was gone, the stocking-foot was shown to the then Chief
Engraver of the notes, who said that if anybody could settle the
business, his son could. And he proposed that the particulars of the
notes should not be communicated to his son, who was then employed in
his department of the Bank, but should be put away under lock and key;
and that if his son’s ingenuity should enable him to discover from
these ashes what notes had really been put in the stocking, and the two
lists should tally, the man should be paid the lost amount. To this
prudent proposal the Bank of Ireland readily assented; being extremely
anxious that the man should not be a loser; but, of course, deeming it
essential to be protected from imposition.
The son readily undertook the delicate commission proposed to him.
He detached the fragments from the stocking with the utmost care, on
the fine point of a penknife; laid the whole gently in a basin of
warm water; and presently saw them, to his delight, begin to unfold
and expand like flowers. By and by, he began to “teaze them” with
very light touches of the ends of a camel’s-hair pencil, and so, by
little and little, and by the most delicate use of the warm water, the
camel’s-hair pencil, and the penknife, got the various morsels separate
before him, and began to piece them together. The first piece laid down
was faintly recognisable by a practised eye as a bit of the left-hand
bottom corner of a twenty pound note; then came a bit of a five; then
of a ten; then more bits of a twenty; then more bits of a five and ten;
then, another left-hand bottom corner of a twenty--so there were two
twenties!--and so on, until, to the admiration and astonishment of the
whole Bank, he noted down the exact amount deposited in the stocking,
and the exact notes of which it had been composed. Upon this--as
he wished to see and divert himself with the man on his return--he
provided himself with a bundle of corresponding new, clean, rustling
notes, and awaited his arrival.
He came exactly as before, with the same blank staring face, and the
same inquiry, “Can you do anything for me, Sir!”
“Well,” said our friend, “I don’t know. Maybe I _can_ do
something. But I have taken a great deal of pains, and lost a great
deal of time, and I want to know what you mean to give me!”
“Is it give, Sir? Thin, is there anything I wouldn’t give for my
eighty-sivin pound tin, Sir; and it’s murdered I am by ould Phillips.”
“Never mind him; there were two twenties, were there not?”
“Oh, holy mother, Sir, there was! Two most illigant twenties! and Ted
Conner--and Phalim--which Reilly--”
He faltered, and stopped as our friend, with much ostentatious
rustling of the crisp paper, produced a new twenty, and then the other
twenty, and then a ten, and then a five, and so forth. Meanwhile,
the man, occasionally murmuring an exclamation of surprise, or a
protestation of gratitude, but gradually becoming vague and remote in
the latter as the notes re-appeared, looked on, staring, evidently
inclined to believe that they were the real lost notes, reproduced in
that state by some chemical process. At last they were all told out,
and in his pocket, and he still stood staring and muttering, “Oh holy
Mother, only to think of it! Sir, it’s bound to you for ever that I
am!”--but more vaguely and remotely now than ever.
“Well,” said our friend, “what do you propose to give me for this?”
After staring and rubbing his chin for some time longer, he replied
with the unexpected question:
“Do you like bacon?”
“Very much,” said our friend.
“Thin it’s a side as I’ll bring your honor to-morrow morning, and a
bucket of new milk--and ould Phillips--”
“Come,” said our friend, glancing at a notable shillelah the man had
under his arm, “let me undeceive you. I don’t want anything of you, and
I am very glad you have got your money back. But I suppose you’d stand
by me, now, if I wanted a boy to help me in any little skirmish?”
They were standing by a window on the top storey of the Bank,
commanding a courtyard, where a sentry was on duty. To our friend’s
amazement, the man dashed out of the room without speaking one word,
suddenly appeared in the courtyard, performed a war-dance round this
astonished soldier--who was a modest young recruit--made the shillelah
flutter, like a wooden butterfly, round his musket, round his bayonet,
round his head, round his body, round his arms, inside and outside his
legs, advanced and retired, rattled it all round him like a firework,
looked up at the window, cried out with a high leap in the air,
“Whooroo! Thry me!”--vanished--and never was beheld at the Bank again
from that time forth.
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