over his fate.

Now they were almost face to face. Forgetting everything but his
pleasure in seeing her once more, and remembering her smiling
greetings in the past, his hand went up involuntarily toward his hat;
but he stopped half-way, for, turning toward her mother just then,
she called her attention to something on the other side of the
street.

"Just what I might have expected!" muttered Alec, thinking she
purposely avoided him. His teeth were set and his face white with
mortification. But in his heart he had not expected it. He had taken
a vague comfort in the thought that she would believe in his
innocence, no matter who else doubted. She had insisted so kindly on
his never giving the lost money another thought.

[Illustration: "HIS HAND WENT UP INVOLUNTARILY TOWARD HIS HAT."]

If there had been only one accusation to deny, he could have gone to
her with that, he thought. He would have compelled her to believe his
innocence by the very force of his earnestness. But the knowledge of
the accusation against his father silenced him.

"Hello! You nearly knocked me down, Stoker. Where are you going?" It
was one of the factory boys who asked the question, and Alec,
hurrying down the street with unseeing eyes, became suddenly aware
that he had run against some one who had caught him by the arm, and
was laughingly shaking him to make him answer. "Where are you going?"

"Oh, I don't know, and I don't care," was the reckless answer.

"All right, come along if you want good company," was the joking
reply, and the other boy, slipping his arm in Alec's, turned his
steps to a corner where a jolly crowd were waiting for him to join
them.

After that there were no more lonely evenings for Alec, when he sat
with bowed head beside his table, staring into vacancy. He should
have had another promotion in March. Alec felt that he was proficient
enough to be advanced, and he told himself bitterly that the reason
he was not was because the manager mistrusted him.

It was true that the manager did distrust him. Not on account of the
suspicions which Ralph Bently had sowed broadcast, but because, made
doubly watchful by the hint, he discovered how Alec was spending his
evenings. Although the work in the factory was done as well as ever,
he knew that no one could keep the company and late hours that Alec
did and not fall short of the high standard he had set for the one
who was ultimately to become his assistant.

The months s