ily
intended)--"so it's all right. We can give you a better room lower down,
if you're going to stay longer." Not knowing whether to laugh or to be
embarrassed at this extraordinary conclusion of the blunder, Randolph
answered that he had just come from the bank, adding, with a pardonable
touch of youthful pride, that he was entering the bank's employment the
next day.

Another equally agreeable surprise met him on his arrival there the next
morning. Without any previous examination or trial he was installed at
once as a corresponding clerk in the place of one just promoted to
a sub-agency in the interior. His handwriting, his facility of
composition, had all been taken for granted, or perhaps predicated
upon something the president had discerned in that one quick, absorbing
glance. He ventured to express the thought to his neighbor.

"The boss," said that gentleman, "can size a man in and out, and all
through, in about the time it would take you and me to tell the color of
his hair. HE don't make mistakes, you bet; but old Dingy--the dep--you
settled with your clothes."

"My clothes!" echoed Randolph, with a faint flush.

"Yes, English cut--that fetched him."

And so his work began. His liberal salary, which seemed to him
munificent in comparison with his previous earnings in the mines,
enabled him to keep the contents of the buckskin purse intact, and
presently to return the borrowed suit of clothes to the portmanteau. The
mysterious owner should find everything as when he first placed it in
his hands. With the quick mobility of youth and his own rather mercurial
nature, he had begun to forget, or perhaps to be a little ashamed of his
keen emotions and sufferings the night of his arrival, until that night
was recalled to him in a singular way.

One Sunday a vague sense of duty to his still missing benefactor
impelled him to spend part of his holiday upon the wharves. He had
rambled away among the shipping at the newer pier slips, and had gazed
curiously upon decks where a few seamen or officers in their Sunday
apparel smoked, paced, or idled, trying vainly to recognize the face
and figure which had once briefly flashed out under the flickering wharf
lamp. Was the stranger a shipmaster who had suddenly transferred himself
to another vessel on another voyage? A crowd which had gathered around
some landing steps nearer shore presently attracted his attention. He
lounged toward it and looked over the shoulders of t