lo, Don. You came in the nick of time. Lend me ten, will you?"

"Sure," answered Don.

He sought his bill-book. It was empty. For a moment he was confused.

"Oh, never mind," said Jimmy, perceiving his embarrassment. "I'll
'phone Dad to send it up by messenger. Bit of fool carelessness on my
part. You'll excuse me?"

Harndon hurried off to the telephone.

Don stared at his empty pocket-book, at the head waiter, who still
stood at the door expectantly, and then replaced the empty wallet in
his pocket. There was no use waiting here any longer. He could not
dine, if he wished. Never before in his life had he been confronted by
such a situation. Once or twice he had been in Harndon's predicament,
but that had meant no more to him than it meant to Harndon--nothing
but a temporary embarrassment. The difference now was that Harndon
could still telephone his father and that he could not. Here was a
significant distinction; it was something he must think over.

Don went on to the Harvard Club. He passed two or three men he knew in
the lobby, but shook his head at their invitation to join them. He
took a seat by himself before an open fire in a far corner of the
lounge. Then he took out his bill-book again, and examined it with
some care, in the hope that a bill might have slipped in among his
cards. The search was without result. Automatically his father's
telephone number suggested itself, but that number now was utterly
without meaning. A new tenant already occupied those offices--a tenant
who undoubtedly would report to the police a modest request to forward
to the Harvard Club by messenger a hundred dollars.

He was beginning to feel hungry--much hungrier than he would have felt
with a pocket full of money. Of course his credit at the club was
good. He could have gone into the dining-room and ordered what he
wished. But credit took on a new meaning. Until now it had been
nothing but a trifling convenience, because at the end of the month he
had only to forward his bill to his father. But that could not be done
any longer.

He could also have gone to any one of a dozen men of his acquaintance
and borrowed from five to fifty dollars. But it was one thing to
borrow as he had in the past, and another to borrow in his present
circumstances. He had no right to borrow. The whole basis of his
credit was gone.

The situation was, on the face of it, so absurd that the longer he
thought it over the more convinced he became t