last that came to be neglected. Night found him not
only equipped with money of his own, but once more (as on that former
occasion) saddled with a considerable sum of other people's.

Now it chanced there lived in the same boarding-house a fellow-clerk of
his, an honest fellow, with what is called a weakness for drink--though
it might, in this case, have been called a strength, for the victim had
been drunk for weeks together without the briefest intermission. To this
unfortunate John intrusted a letter with an inclosure of bonds,
addressed to the bank manager. Even as he did so he thought he
perceived a certain haziness of eye and speech in his trustee; but he
was too hopeful to be stayed, silenced the voice of warning in his
bosom, and with one and the same gesture committed the money to the
clerk, and himself into the hands of destiny.

I dwell, even at the risk of tedium, on John's minutest errors, his case
being so perplexing to the moralist; but we have done with them now, the
roll is closed, the reader has the worst of our poor hero, and I leave
him to judge for himself whether he or John has been the less deserving.
Henceforth we have to follow the spectacle of a man who was a mere
whip-top for calamity; on whose unmerited misadventures not even the
humorist can look without pity, and not even the philosopher without
alarm.

That same night the clerk entered upon a bout of drunkenness so
consistent as to surprise even his intimate acquaintance. He was
speedily ejected from the boarding-house; deposited his portmanteau with
a perfect stranger, who did not even catch his name; wandered he knew
not where, and was at last hove-to, all standing, in a hospital at
Sacramento. There, under the impenetrable _alias_ of the number of his
bed, the crapulous being lay for some more days unconscious of all
things, and of one thing in particular: that the police were after him.
Two months had come and gone before the convalescent in the Sacramento
hospital was identified with Kirkman, the absconding San Francisco
clerk; even then, there must elapse nearly a fortnight more till the
perfect stranger could be hunted up, the portmanteau recovered, and
John's letter carried at length to its destination, the seal still
unbroken, the inclosure still intact.

Meanwhile John had gone upon his holidays without a word, which was
irregular; and there had disappeared with him a certain sum of money,
which was out of all bounds of palli