ument might become too fine for use.

Besides the ministry to his self-respect which his labors rendered,
there was another influence upon Sam Yates that tended to confirm its
effects. He had in his investigations come into intimate contact with
the results of all forms of vice. Idiocy, insanity, poverty, moral
debasement, disease in a thousand repulsive forms, all these had
frightened and disgusted him. On the direct road to one of these
terrible goals he had been traveling. He knew it, and, with a shudder
many times repeated, felt it. He had been arrested in the downward road,
and, God helping him, he would never resume it. He had witnessed brutal
cruelties and neglect among officials that maddened him. The
professional indifference of keepers and nurses towards those who, if
vicious, were still unfortunate and helpless, offended and outraged all
of manhood there was left in him.

One evening, early in the spring, he made his customary call upon Mr.
Belcher, bringing his usual report. He had completed the canvass of the
city and its environs, and had found no testimony to the death or recent
presence of Mr. Benedict. He hoped that Mr. Belcher was done with him,
for he saw that his brutal will was the greatest obstacle to his reform.
If he could get away from his master, he could begin life anew; for his
professional brothers, who well remembered his better days, were ready
to throw business into his hands, now that he had become himself again.

"I suppose this ends it," said Yates, as he read his report, and passed
it over into Mr. Belcher's hands.

"Oh, you do!"

"I do not see how I can be of further use to you."

"Oh, you don't!"

"I have certainly reason to be grateful for your assistance, but I have
no desire to be a burden upon your hands. I think I can get a living now
in my profession."

"Then we've found that we have a profession, have we? We've become
highly respectable."

"I really don't see what occasion you have to taunt me. I have done my
duty faithfully, and taken no more than my just pay for the labor I have
performed."

"Sam Yates, I took you out of the gutter. Do you know that?"

"I do, sir."

"Did you ever hear of my doing such a thing as that before?"

"I never did."

"What do you suppose I did it for?"

"To serve yourself."

"You are right; and now let me tell you that I am not done with you yet,
and I shall not be done with you until I have in my hands a certificate
of the de