tails of the proposed trip that it was after
eleven when their minds came back to the common things of life.

"Well," Harry Stevens said, then, "I've got to go home, but I'll be
here to-morrow night to talk it over. As Glen says, the Rio Grande del
Norte is a funny kind of a stream, like all the waterways in that
section of the country, bottom full of sand, and all that, but I
presume we can float a houseboat on it."

"Of course we can," Glen put in. "It doesn't take much water to run a
houseboat. If we get stuck, you can wire your father to send a motor
car down after us."

"He would do it, all right," replied Harry. "We'll take an auto trip
across the continent, some day. Good night, fellows."

"I must go right now," George Fremont said. "Mr. Cameron is at the
office, working over the Tolford estate papers, and he asked me to call
at the rooms and go home with him. He's always nervous when working
over that case. The heirs are troublesome, and threatening, I guess."

Frank Shaw walked with George to the nearest corner, where the latter
decided to wait for a taxicab. The night had cleared, but the wind off
the Bay was still strong and cold.

"I've a notion to ride down to the office with you," Frank said, as
they waited. "You could leave me at home on the way up."

"I wish you would," Fremont said. "Skyscrapers are uncanny after dark,
and the elevator will not be running. Mr. Cameron will be glad to see
you. Come on!"

Frank hesitated a minute, and then decided to go on home, so the boys
shook hands and parted for the night. Many and many a time after that
night they both had good cause to remember how different the immediate
future of one of their number would have been had Frank obeyed his
first impulse and gone to the Cameron building with his friend.

When, at last, Fremont was whirled up to the front of the Cameron
building he saw that there were lights in the Cameron suite. Believing
that his benefactor would be there at his work, Fremont let himself in
at the big door with a key and started up the long climb to the sixth
floor.

The vacant corridors, as he passed them one by one, seemed to him to be
strangely still. Even the people employed at night to clean the halls
and offices were not in sight. The boy started suddenly half a dozen
times on the way up, started involuntarily, as if some uncanny thing
were spying out upon him from the shadows.

Then he came to the Cameron suite and