This man's name was Sampson Wilmot.

He was old, but he looked much older than he was. His hair was white,
and hung in long thin locks upon the collar of his shabby bottle-green
great coat. He wore a great coat, although it was the height of summer,
and most people found the weather insupportably hot. His face was wizen
and wrinkled, his faded blue eyes dim and weak-looking. He was feeble,
and his hands were tremulous with a perpetual nervous motion. Already he
had been stricken twice with paralysis, and he knew that whenever the
third stroke came it must be fatal.

He was not very much afraid of death, however; for his life had been a
joyless one, a monotonous existence of perpetual toil, unrelieved by any
home joys or social pleasures. He was not a bad man, for he was honest,
conscientious, industrious, and persevering.

He lived in a humble lodging, in a narrow court near the bank, and went
twice every Sunday to the church of St. Gundolph.

When he died he hoped to be buried beneath the flagstones of that City
church, and to lie cheek by jowl with the gold in the cellars of the
bank.

The three men were assembled in this gloomy private room after office
hours, on a sultry August evening, in order to consult together upon
rather an important subject, namely, the reception of Henry Dunbar, the
new head of the firm.

This Henry Dunbar had been absent from England for five-and-thirty
years, and no living creature now employed in the bank, except Sampson