“How would a piece of broadcloth answer your purpose?”

“What is it worth?”

“I have a piece of twenty yards, worth eight dollars a yard.  It would bring six and a half under the hammer.  You can hold that, if you please.”

“How much interest will you pay?”

“I will give you two dollars for the use of one hundred for thirty days.”

“If you will say three, you may have it.”

“Three per cent. a month!—­thirty-six per cent. a year!  Oh no!  That would ruin any man.”

“I don’t think the operation worth making for less than three dollars.”

“It is too much, Wolford.  But I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  Let it be for sixty days, and make the interest five dollars.”

“I to hold the cloth as security until it is paid?”

“Certainly.”

“Very well.  You shall have the money.”

A note for one hundred and five dollars, at sixty days, was drawn and handed to the young shaver, who paid down one hundred dollars, and went off with his collateral under his arm.

This transaction opened a new world to Wolford’s imagination.  Two and a half per cent. a month, and six per cent. per annum, could hardly be compared together.  He sat down and began to figure up the result of the one operation in comparison with the other, and found that while his investment in ground-rents yielded only three hundred dollars a year, five thousand dollars, at two and a half per cent. a month, the rate at which he had made the operation just referred to, would yield fifteen hundred dollars per annum!

From that moment he became dissatisfied with ground-rents as an investment.  As quickly as it could be done, he sold, for one thousand dollars, a piece of real estate, and, depositing the money in bank, looked around him for good paper to shave.  He did not have to look very long.  Borrowers quickly presented themselves, but no one got money except on the most tangible kind of security, and at a ruinous interest.  Careful as he tried to be, Wolford was not always successful in his operations.  One or two failures on the part of his borrowers, made him acquainted at a magistrate’s office, where he acquired another new idea upon which he improved.

“If you wish to invest money safely and profitably, I will put you in the way of doing it,” said a petty dispenser of justice to poor debtors, rogues and vagabonds, aside to the miser one day, after he had given judgment against a delinquent borrower.

“How?” eagerly asked Wolford.

“A great many cases of debt are decided by me every week, on amounts varying from one to fifty dollars,” replied the magistrate.  “As soon as a judgment is given, the debtor has to pay the money, find security, or go to jail, In most cases, the matter is settled by security for six months, when the debt, with costs and interest, has to be paid.”

“Legal interest?” asked Wolford.