arts together.

"Here's the programme," he said by way of explanation. "I'm goin' to
put you over my knee and paddle you real thorough. When you make up
yore mind that you want to buy that suit for fifty-five dollars, it
will be up to you to let me know. Take yore own time about it. Don't
let me hurry you."

Before the programme had more than well started, the victim of it
signified his willingness to treat with the foe. To part with
fifty-five dollars was a painful business, but not to part with it was
going to hurt a good deal more. He chose the lesser of two evils.

While he was counting out the bills Clay bragged up the suit. He
praised its merits fluently and cheerfully. When he left he locked the
door of the office behind him and handed the key to one of the clerks.

"I've got a kinda notion Mr. Bernstein wants to get out of his office.
He's actin' sort o' restless, seems like."

Restless was hardly the word. He was banging on the door like a wild
man. "Police! Murder! Help!" he shouted in a high falsetto.

Clay wasted no time. He and the fifty-five dollars vanished into the
street. In his haste he bumped into a Salvation Army lassie with a
tambourine.

She held it out to him for a donation, and was given the shock of her
life. For into that tambourine the big brown man crammed a fistful of
bills. He waited for no thanks, but cut round the corner toward
Broadway in a hurry.

When the girl reached headquarters and counted the contribution she
found it amounted to just fifty-five dollars.

CHAPTER VI

CLAY TAKES A TRANSFER

From the top of a bus Clay Lindsay looked down a canon which angled
across the great city like a river of light.

He had come from one land of gorges to another. In the walls of this
one, thousands and tens of thousands of cliff-dwellers hid themselves
during the day like animals of some queer breed and poured out into the
canon at sunset.

Now the river in its bed was alive with a throbbing tide.
Cross-currents of humanity flowed into it from side streets and ebbed
out of it into others. Streams of people were swept down, caught here
and there in swirling eddies. Taxis, private motors, and trolley-cars
struggled in the raceway.

Electric sky-signs flashed and changed. From the foyer of theaters and
moving-picture palaces thousands of bulbs flung their glow to the
gorge. A mist of light hung like an atmosphere above the Great White
Way.

All this Cl