“Not enough saved from the wreck even to buy the merciful rope that should end all my humor and impecuniosity!” he mutters, over his folded arms and heaving chest.  “I have come to this out-of-the-way suburb to end my miserable days, and not so much as one clothes-line have I seen yet.  There is the pond, however; I can jump into that, I suppose:  but how much more decent were it to make one’s quietus under the merry greenwood tree with a cord—­”

He stops suddenly, holding his breath; and, almost simultaneously with a sharp, rushing noise in the leaves overhead, something drops upon his shoulder.  He grasps it, cautiously feels of it, and, to his unspeakable amazement, discovers that it is a rope apparently fastened to the branches above!

“Wonderful!” he ejaculates, in an awe-stricken whisper.  “Providence helps a wretch to die, if not to live.  At any other time I should think this very strange, but just now I’ve got but one thing to do.  Here’s my rope, here’s my neck, and here goes!”

Heedless of everything but his dread intention, he rapidly ties the rope about his throat, and is in the act of throwing forward his whole weight upon it, when there is a sharp jerk of the rope, he is drawn up about three feet in the air, and, before he can collect his thoughts, is as abruptly let down upon his feet again.  Simultaneously, a sound almost like suppressed swearing comes very clearly to his ear, and he is conscious of something dimly white in the profound darkness, not far away.

“Sold again:  signed, J. Bumstead,” exclaims a deep voice.  “I thought the rope was caught in a crotch; but ’twasn’t.  Try’t once more.”

The astounded hearer feels the rope tugging at his own neck again, and, with a half comprehension of the situation, calls “Stop!” in a suffocating voice.

“Who’s there?” comes from the darkness.

“Jeremy Bentham, late proprietor of first-class American Comic Paper.—­Died of Comic Serial.—­Want to hang myself,” is the jerky reply from the other side.

“Got your own rope, sir?”

“No.  One fell down on my shoulders just as I was wishing for it; but it seems to be too elastic.”

“That’s the other end ’f my rope, air,” rejoins the second voice, as in wrath.  “I threw’t over the branches and thought it had caught, instead of that it let me down, sir.”

“And drew me up,” says Mr. Bentham.

Before another word can be spoken by either, the light of a dark-lantern is flashed upon them.  There is Mr. Bumstead, not three yards from Mr. Bentham; each with an end of the same rope about his neck, and the head of the former turbaned with a damp towel.

“Are ye men?” exclaims the deep voice of Mr. MELANCTHON Schenck from behind the lantern, “and would ye madly incur death before having taken out life-policies in the Boreal?”

“And would my uncle celebrate my return in this style?” cried still another voice from the darkness.