of the robbery on which you are now engaged you will please to
shift over to the young man who brings you this letter. You will
tell him all the circumstances of the case, just as they stand;
you will put him up to the progress you have made (if any) toward
detecting the person or persons by whom the money has been
stolen; and you will leave him to make the best he can of the
matter now in your hands. He is to have the whole responsibility
of the case, and the whole credit of his success if he brings it
to a proper issue.

So much for the orders that I am desired to communicate to you.

A word in your ear, next, about this new man who is to take your
place. His name is Matthew Sharpin, and he is to have the chance
given him of dashing into our office at one jump--supposing he
turns out strong enough to take it. You will naturally ask me how
he comes by this privilege. I can only tell you that he has some
uncommonly strong interest to back him in certain high quarters,
which you and I had better not mention except under our breaths.
He has been a lawyer's clerk, and he is wonderfully conceited in
his opinion of himself, as well as mean and underhand, to look
at. According to his own account, he leaves his old trade and
joins ours of his own free will and preference. You will no more
believe that than I do. My notion is, that he has managed to
ferret out some private information in connection with the
affairs of one of his master's clients, which makes him rather an
awkward customer to keep in the office for the future, and which,
at the same time, gives him hold enough over his employer to make
it dangerous to drive him into a corner by turning him away. I
think the giving him this unheard-of chance among us is, in plain