the
window, his spectacles poked above his eyebrows and his forehead
red with indignation. Between the thumb and forefinger of his left
hand he held a card.

"So," he exclaimed, vainly trying to appear collected, "I find that
my firm has been conducting an uptown office for criminal business!
This is one of your cards, I believe?"

He tossed it from him as if it were infected with some virulent
legal disease, and I saw that it was one of the unfortunate cards
that I had had printed before forming my partnership with Gottlieb.
It was no use denying anything.

"Yes," I answered, as quietly as I could, "it is one of my cards."

"I am also informed," he continued, his voice trembling with
suppressed wrath, "that while you have been masquerading as a
student in this office you have been doing a police-court law
business in association with a person named Gottlieb."

I turned white, yet made no traverse of his indictment. I was
going to be kicked out, but I felt that I could at least make my
exit with a dignified composure.

"Young man, you are no longer wanted here," continued Mr. Haight
with acerbity. "You have found your own level without assistance
and you will no doubt remain there. You obtained your position in
this office by means of false pretences. I do not know who you
really are or whence you really come, but I have no doubt as to
where you will eventually go. This office does not lead in the
right direction. You ought to be locked up! Get out!"

I went.

Glib as I was in the defence of others I found it difficult to
argue in my own behalf. At any rate, it would have availed nothing.
I had been tried, convicted, and sentenced in my absence, and it
was vain to hope for pardon. These is something in righteous
indignation that inevitably carries respect with it. I fully
sympathized with Mr. Haight. I had cheated and outraged his firm
and I knew it. I had no excuse to offer and he was entitled to
his burst of excoriation. Morally I felt sure that the worm that
had worked deepest into his bone was the fact that my guardian,
whose name, as the reader may recall, I had made use of as an
introduction, had not in fact written "Tottenham on Perpetuities"
at all.

Thus I passed out of the office of Haight & Foster much as I had
slipped in--quite unostentatiously. All hope of success along the
slow and difficult lines of legitimate practice faded from my mind.
Whether I willed it or not, as a crim