vague sense of wrong which
had always haunted him was this--that this was the vile culmination of
a plan to GET RID OF HIM, and that he had been deliberately lost and led
astray by his relatives as helplessly and completely as a useless cat or
dog!

Perhaps there was something of this in his face, for the clerk, staring
at him, bade him sit down for a moment, and again vanished into the
mysterious interior. Clarence had no conception how long he was absent,
or indeed anything but his own breathless thoughts, for he was conscious
of wondering afterwards why the clerk was leading him through a door in
the counter into an inner room of many desks, and again through a glass
door into a smaller office, where a preternaturally busy-looking man
sat writing at a desk. Without looking up, but pausing only to apply a
blotting-pad to the paper before him, the man said crisply--

"So you've been consigned to some one who don't seem to turn up, and
can't be found, eh? Never mind that," as Clarence laid Peyton's letter
before him. "Can't read it now. Well, I suppose you want to be shipped
back to Stockton?"

"No!" said the boy, recovering his voice with an effort.

"Eh, that's business, though. Know anybody here?"

"Not a living soul; that's why they sent me," said the boy, in sudden
reckless desperation. He was the more furious that he knew the tears
were standing in his eyes.

The idea seemed to strike the man amusingly. "Looks a little like it,
don't it?" he said, smiling grimly at the paper before him. "Got any
money?"

"A little."

"How much?"

"About twenty dollars," said Clarence hesitatingly. The man opened a
drawer at his side, mechanically, for he did not raise his eyes, and
took out two ten-dollar gold pieces. "I'll go twenty better," he said,
laying them down on the desk. "That'll give you a chance to look around.
Come back here, if you don't see your way clear." He dipped his pen into
the ink with a significant gesture as if closing the interview.

Clarence pushed back the coin. "I'm not a beggar," he said doggedly.

The man this time raised his head and surveyed the boy with two keen
eyes. "You're not, hey? Well, do I look like one?"

"No," stammered Clarence, as he glanced into the man's haughty eyes.

"Yet, if I were in your fix, I'd take that money and be glad to get it."

"If you'll let me pay you back again," said Clarence, a little ashamed,
and considerably frightened at his implied accusation of