or would go to
eternal perdition and take his entire stock with him, stumped out.

"This," said the proprietor, tranquilly, burrowing his way to where
Archie stood and exhibiting a saffron-coloured outrage, which appeared
to be a poor relation of the flannel family, "would put you back fifty
dollars. And cheap!"

"Fifty dollars!"

"Sixty, I said. I don't speak always distinct."

Archie regarded the distressing garment with a shuddering horror. A
young man with an educated taste in clothes, it got right in among his
nerve centres.

"But, honestly, old soul, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but that
isn't a suit, it's just a regrettable incident!"

The proprietor turned to the door in a listening attitude.

"I believe I hear that feller coming back," he said.

Archie gulped.

"How about trying it on?" he said. "I'm not sure, after all, it isn't
fairly ripe."

"That's the way to talk," said the proprietor, cordially. "You try it
on. You can't judge a suit, not a real nice suit like this, by looking
at it. You want to put it on. There!" He led the way to a dusty
mirror at the back of the shop. "Isn't that a bargain at seventy
dollars?...Why, say, your mother would be proud if she could see her boy
now!"

A quarter of an hour later, the proprietor, lovingly kneading a little
sheaf of currency bills, eyed with a fond look the heap of clothes which
lay on the counter.

"As nice a little lot as I've ever had in my shop!" Archie did not deny
this. It was, he thought, probably only too true.

"I only wish I could see you walking up Fifth Avenue in them!"
rhapsodised the proprietor. "You'll give 'em a treat! What you going
to do with 'em? Carry 'em under your arm?" Archie shuddered strongly.
"Well, then, I can send 'em for you anywhere you like. It's all the same
to me. Where'll I send 'em?"

Archie meditated. The future was black enough as it was. He shrank from
the prospect of being confronted next day, at the height of his misery,
with these appalling reach-me-downs.

An idea struck him.

"Yes, send 'em," he said.

"What's the name and address?"

"Daniel Brewster," said Archie, "Hotel Cosmopolis."

It was a long time since he had given his father-in-law a present.

Archie went out into the street, and began to walk pensively down a now
peaceful Ninth Avenue. Out of the depths that covered him, black as the
pit from pole to pole, no single ray of hope came to cheer him. He could
not, like the poet,