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82 his opinion fair profit—he must not expect too much from such a mere speculation. "You see, sir," turning to Charles, "desperate diseases require desperate remedies—you cannot be worse off, and you may be better. Sign this bond for twenty thousand pounds; if the skin answers, it is a bargain; if not, being, as you say, a beggar, the agreement is void—there can be no levy where there are no effects: and though I have heard of skinning a flint, I never yet could learn how it was managed." Charles signed the bond, and seizing the shagreen skin, rushed away, exclaiming, "Now give me wealth—hundreds, thousands, millions!" "Millions!" almost shrieked the auctioneer, aghast—"taken in, cheated, robbed—stop thief!" but his customer was lost in the darkness which had by this time set in. Again Charles wandered through the streets, with that indifference as to what direction which spoke the pre-occupied mind; while the hurried step no less marked the tumult of his thoughts. The lamps glittering in the water, which lay below like a dark mirror, recalled him to himself—he was on the very bridge he had crossed in the morning. He was on it, too, alone; not a step broke the silence but his own, and the depths of the shadow which rested on the river, vast and impenetrable, were even as the eternity into which one moment would plunge him. But the skin had taken hold of his imagination.