but are simply two lines drawn with red ink. This is the
crowning test in the detection of counterfeit currency, and I have no
doubt that the same tests will hold good in the examination of foreign
currency.

A GRAIN OF GOLD.

BY WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE.

Everybody said he would go to the bad; everybody expected it of him.
Whether it was the fulfilment of the promise, "As thy faith so be it,"
or whether he felt any conscientious obligation resting upon him not
to disappoint public expectation, nobody knows. Nobody was surprised,
however, when news went over the town that Jim Royal was going to the
penitentiary.

Going to "the pen" at sixteen years of age. Nobody thought of that.
Moreover, the old Tennessee prison contains scores of boys _under_
sixteen, for that matter; and if they do not work satisfactorily, the
lessees of the prison have made no complaint of them; therefore, they
_do_ work satisfactorily; for the lessees are not likely to pay the
State for the privilege of feeding worthless hands. But as for
vagabond Jim, if anybody thought of him at all, it was something after
this wise:

"Safe place. Keep him out of mischief. Protect other people's boys.
Bad influence, Jim's. Town's scourge. Bad mother before him.
Questionable father. Made to work."

Now there were two considerations in this category, concerning which
the public opinion was exactly correct. More so, indeed, than public
opinion is usually known to be. Namely: Jim would "be made to work."
No doubt about that. There were straps for the obstreperous, the
water-pump for the sullen, the pool for the belligerent, the lash for
the lazy, and for the rebellious--the shotgun.

Oh, yes; Jim would be made to work. The town was quite right about
that.

The other consideration, although not altogether so important, was a
trifle more interesting. Jim's "questionable father"!

It was his mother's fault that public _interest_ (?) was not
gratified. And it never forgave the poor outcast for leaving the
world with that seal of secrecy still unbroken. The heart broke, but
not the seal. They cast her off utterly when, poor girl-mother, she
stubbornly refused to reveal the name of her betrayer. To them there
was nothing heroic in the answer, "Because _my_ life is ruined, shall
I ruin his?"

So they treasured it against her in her grave, and against her son
after her, in his grave too, that living, loathsome sepulchre, the
State prison.

But they had