the kindness and
forethought of certain relatives he was for a time spared all anxiety on
their account, he soon found that some exertion on his part would be
necessary to their continued subsistence, and accordingly set about the
task of finding suitable employment, with much spirit and no little
hope.

But a long series of disappointments taught him that young men cannot
leap at a bound into a fine salary or even a promising situation; and
baffled in every wish, worn out with continued failures, he sank from
one state of hope to another, till he was ready to embrace any prospect
that would insure ease and comfort to the helpless beings he so much
loved.

It was while he was in this condition that Mr. Gryce--a somewhat famous
police detective of New York--came upon him, and observing, as he
thought, some signs of natural aptitude for _fine work_, as he called
it, in this elegant but decidedly hard-pushed young gentleman, seized
upon him with an avidity that can only be explained by this detective's
long-cherished desire to ally to himself a man of real refinement and
breeding; having, as he privately admitted more than once to certain
chosen friends, a strong need of such a person to assist him in certain
cases where great houses were to be entered and fine gentlemen if not
fair ladies subjected to interviews of a delicate and searching nature.

To join the police force and be a detective was the last contingency
that had occurred to Horace Byrd. But men in decidedly straitened
circumstances cannot pick and choose too nicely; and after a week of
uncertainty and fresh disappointment, he went manfully to his mother and
told her of the offer that had been made him. Meeting with less
discouragement than he had expected from the broken-down and unhappy
woman, he gave himself up to the guiding hand of Mr. Gryce, and before
he realized it, was enrolled among the secret members of the New York
force.

He was not recognized publicly as a detective. His name was not even
known to any but the highest officials. He was employed for special
purposes, and it was not considered desirable that he should be seen at
police head-quarters. But being a man of much ability and of a solid,
reliable nature, he made his way notwithstanding, and by the time he had
been in the service a year, was looked upon as a good-fellow and a truly
valuable acquisition to the bureau. Indeed, he possessed more than the
usual qualifications for his call