"And I suppose," said the man, "you have tried your hand at putting the one for the other, and so doing your confiding customers." "Yes, yes, that is the dodge, I can see very well," said another man, winking at the first; "and a good one too, I have known them do so with diamonds." "Yes, but never with pearls; however, there are some trades that it is desirable to know." "You're right." The fat man now carefully examined the pearls, set them down on the table, and looked hard at them. "There now, I told you I could bother you. You are not so good a judge that you would not have known, if you had not been told they were sham pearls, but what they were real." "I must say, you have produced the best imitations I have ever seen. Why you ought to make your fortune in a few years—a handsome fortune!" "So I should, but for one thing." "And what is that?" "The difficulty," said Todd, "of getting rid of them; if you ask anything below their value, you are suspected, and you run the chance of being stopped and losing them at the least, and perhaps entail a prosecution." "Very true; but there is risk in everything; we all run risks; but then the harvest!" "That may be," said Todd, "but this is peculiarly dangerous. I have not the means of getting introduction to the nobility themselves, and if I had I should be doubted, for they would say a working man cannot come honestly by such valuable things, and then I must concoct a tale to escape the Mayor of London." "Ha!—ha!—ha!" "Well, then, you can take them to a goldsmith." "There are not many of them who would do so: they would not deal in them; and, moreover, I have been to one or two of them; as for a lapidary, why, he is not so easily cheated." "Have you tried?" "I did, and had to make the best of my way out, pursued as quickly as they could run, and I thought at one time I must have been stopped, but a few lucky turns brought me clear, when I was told to turn up this court; and I came in here." "Well," said one man, who had been examining
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