The General had become conscious that he was not quite the man that he had been.  His mind was darkened and dulled by crime.  He was haunted by vague fears and apprehensions.  With his frequent and appalling losses of money, he had lost a measure of his faith in himself.  His coolness of calculation had been diminished; he listened with readier credulity to rumors, and yielded more easily to the personal influences around him.  Even the steady prosperity which attended his regular business became a factor in his growing incapacity for the affairs of the street.  His reliance on his permanent sources of income made him more reckless in his speculations.

His grand scheme for “gently” and “tenderly” unloading his Crooked Valley stock upon the hands of his trusting dupes along the line, worked, however, to perfection.  It only required rascality, pure and simple, under the existing conditions, to accomplish this scheme, and he found in the results nothing left to be desired.  They furnished him with a capital of ready money, but his old acquaintances discovered the foul trick he had played, and gave him a wide berth.  No more gigantic combinations were possible to him, save with swindlers like himself, who would not hesitate to sacrifice him as readily and as mercilessly as he had sacrificed his rural victims.

Mrs. Dillingham had been absent a month when he one day received a polite note from Mr. Balfour, as Paul Benedict’s attorney, requesting him, on behalf of his principal, to pay over to him an equitable share of the profits upon his patented inventions, and to enter into a definite contract for the further use of them.

The request came in so different a form from what he had anticipated, and was so tamely courteous, that he laughed over the note in derision.  “Milk for babes!” he exclaimed, and laughed again.  Either Balfour was a coward, or he felt that his case was a weak one.  Did he think the General was a fool?

Without taking the note to Cavendish, who had told him to bring ten thousand dollars when he came again, and with’ out consulting anybody, he wrote the following note in answer:—­

    “To James Balfour, Esq.: 

    “Your letter of this date received, and contents noted.  Permit me to
    say in reply: 

    “1st.  That I have no evidence that you are Paul Benedict’s attorney.

    “2d.  That I have no evidence that Paul Benedict is living, and that
    I do not propose to negotiate in any way, on any business, with a
    fraud, or a man of straw.

“3d.  That I am the legal assignee of all the patents originally issued to Paul Benedict, which I have used and am now using.  I hold his assignment in the desk on which I write this letter, and it stands duly recorded in Washington, though, from my ignorance of the law, it has only recently been placed upon the books in the Patent Office.

“Permit me to say, in closing, that, as I bear you no malice, I will show you the assignment at your pleasure, and thus relieve you from the danger of entering upon a conspiracy to defraud me of rights which I propose, with all the means at my disposal, to defend.

    “Yours, ROBERT BELCHER.”