s."

Many an eye approvingly followed the stalwart young man still in
the flush of his unsapped vigor, at twenty-eight, as the tall form
swept on through the crowds of polyglot women.

There was a healthy tan on Clayton's face, his brown hair crisply
curled upon a well-set head, his keen blue eye and soldierly mustache
finely setting off a frank and engaging countenance.

The grave sense of gratitude, his place of trust, the stern admonitions
of his sententious patron, Worthington, and the counsel of his
only chum--a hard-headed young New York lawyer--had kept him so
far from the prehensile clutches of the Jezebel-infested Tenderloin.

Clayton had fallen judiciously into the haven of a well-chosen
apartment, sharing his intimacy only with Arthur Ferris, the
brisk-eyed advocate whose curt office missive always enforced the
lagging collections of the New York branch.

Simultaneously with his last promotion, however, there came to
Clayton the knowledge that he was continuously and systematically
watched by the unseen agents of the Fidelity Company.

And, yet strong in his own determination, he bore as a galling
chain, growing heavier with the months, the knowledge that the eye
of the secret agent would surely follow him, in all the "pleasures"
incident to his time of life and rising financial station.

The sword hung over his defenceless head!--too busy for the gad-fly
life of the clubs--a strong, lonely swimmer in the tide of New York
life, he was as yet a comparative stranger to Folly and her motley
crew of merry wantons in gay Gotham.

The theater, some good music, his athletics, and the hastily
snatched pleasures of vacation, together with the limp reading of
an overwearied man, afforded him such desultory pleasures as fell
in his path.

On his way now to a luncheon engagement with his comrade Ferris,
at Taylor's, his mind was busied only with the care of the daily
treasure trust.

Serenely confident, he swung along, his two score thousand
of dollars being a mere ordinary deposit, in a business which, in
holiday seasons, and at times of monthly settlements, often stuffed
the portmanteau with sums rising the hundred thousand.

His callous eye vainly rested on the peopled loneliness of the
bustling crowd, intent only upon the possibility of a sudden dash
of some sneak thief, or the chance malignity of some swell "mobsman."

Suddenly Randall Clayton paused in his swinging stride. For a
face, rapt in its