His hard, exciting life was retiring.  He was leaving his foul reputation, his wife and children, his old pursuits and his fondly cherished idol behind him.  He was leaving danger behind.  He was leaving Sing Sing behind!  He had all Europe, with plenty of money, before him.  His spirits began to rise.  He even took a look into his mirror, to be a witness of his own triumph.

At four o’clock, after the steamer had lain at anchor for two or three hours, the tug arrived, and as his was the leeward side of the vessel, she unloaded her passengers upon the steamer where he could see them.  There were no faces that he knew, and he was relieved.  He heard a great deal of tramping about the decks, and through the cabin.  Once, two men came into the little passage into which his door opened.  He heard his name spoken, and the whispered assurance that his room was occupied by a sick woman; and then they went away.

At last, the orders were given to cast off the tug.  He saw the anxious looks of officers as they slid by his port-hole, and then he realized that he was free.

The anchor was hoisted, the great engine lifted itself to its mighty task, and the voyage was begun.  They had gone down a mile, perhaps, when Mr. Belcher came out of his state-room.  Supper was not ready—­would not be ready for an hour.  He took a hurried survey of the passengers, none of whom he knew.  They were evidently gentle-folk, mostly from inland cities, who were going to Europe for pleasure.  He was glad to see that he attracted little attention.  He sat down on deck, and took up a newspaper which a passenger had left behind him.

The case of “Benedict vs. Belcher” absorbed three or four columns, besides a column of editorial comment, in which the General’s character and his crime were painted with a free hand and in startling colors.  Then, in the financial column, he found a record of the meeting of the Crooked Valley Corporation, to which was added the statement that suspicions were abroad that the retiring President had been guilty of criminal irregularities in connection with the bonds of the Company—­irregularities which would immediately become a matter of official investigation.  There was also an account of his operations in Muscogee Air Line, and a rumor that he had fled from the city, by some of the numerous out-going lines of steamers, and that steps had already been taken to head him off at every possible point of landing in this country and Europe.

This last rumor was not calculated to increase his appetite, or restore his self-complacency and self-assurance.  He looked all these accounts over a second time, in a cursory way, and was about to fold the paper, so as to hide or destroy it, when his eye fell upon a column of foreign despatches.  He had never been greatly interested in this department of his newspaper, but now that he was on his way to Europe, they assumed a new significance; and, beginning at the top, he read them through.  At the foot of the column, he read the words:  “Heavy Failure of a Banking House;” and his attention was absorbed at once by the item which followed: