A third individual stood beside them--the person in my own immediate neighbourhood to whom I had paid the second note; this, by some means or other, before the coming down of the agent, had found its way to the same provincial bank, and also being pronounced a forgery, it had speedily been traced to the person to whom I had paid it.
It was owing to the apparition of this second note that the agent had determined, without further inquiry, to cause me to be summoned before the rural tribunal.
"In a few words the magistrates' clerk gave me to understand the state of the case.

I was filled with surprise and consternation.

I knew myself to be perfectly innocent of any fraudulent intention, but at the time of which I am speaking it was a matter fraught with the greatest danger to be mixed up, how ever innocently, with the passing of false money.

The law with respect to forgery was terribly severe, and the innocent as well as the guilty occasionally suffered.

Of this I was not altogether ignorant; unfortunately, however, in my transactions with the stranger, the idea of false notes being offered to me, and my being brought into trouble by means of them, never entered my mind.