gets
back to his desk, and seems to enjoy it immensely, for he drums out an
exhilarating dead march with his long, wiry fingers on the cover of the
letter-book. The pale book-keeper--his hair and eyes are darker than when
we first saw him sitting with little Bell at "the round window" in the Old
House--continues to write assiduously; and the orphan thinks that he hears
fire-bells, his ears ring so.

He's an unfortunate atom of humanity, that office-boy. He was never young.
He never passed through the degrading cycles of infancy--never had any
marbles or hoops: _his_ limbs were never ignominiously confined by those
"triangular arrangements" incidental to babyhood. At five, when other
children are bumping their heads over steep stairs, he smoked cinnamon
segars, and was a precocious, astute little villain at seven. For
thirty-six months he folded books for Harper & Brothers, and at the
advanced age of ten years three months, was bound over to the tender
mercies of Flint & Snarle for "thirty dollars per year _and_ clothing," (so
the indentures read;) but as he is charged with all the inkstands
demolished during the term, and one gross of imaginary lead pencils, he
generally has about twenty-five dollars to his credit on the 1st of
January, which Flint generously offers to keep for him at four per cent.
interest, and which offer the ungrateful orphan "firmly but respectfully"
declines.

"Mortimer!" cries Mr. Flint, in a quick, snarly voice from the inner
office.

The book-keeper lays down the pen which he has just dipped in the ink, and
disappears in the little room. Mr. Flint is turning over the leaves of the
invoice book.

"In thirteen pages there are no less than two blots and five erasures. You
have grown careless in your penmanship lately;" and Mr. Flint closes the
book with a report like that of a pocket-pistol, and opens it again. One
would suppose the office-boy to be shot directly through the heart; but he
survives, and is attacked with a wonderful fit of industry.

"Do you write in your sleep?" inquires Mr. Flint, with a quiet insolence.

Mortimer thinks how often he has toiled over those same pages at hours when
he should have been sleeping--hours taken from his life. But he makes no
reply. He only bites his lips, and lets his eyes flash. Suddenly a thought
strikes him, and, bending over Mr. Flint's shoulder, as if to examine more
closely his careless chirography, he takes a small key from an open drawer
i