, but it kept him in clothes and coarse food, until one day,
about a year after his apprenticeship there, he chanced to save the life
of Mr. Belgrade, the senior partner. A gas-pipe in the private office of
the firm exploded, and the place took fire, and Mr. Belgrade, smothered
and helpless, would have perished in the flames, had not Arch, with a
bravery few would have expected in a bashful, retiring boy, plunged
through the smoke and flame, and borne him to a place of safety.

Mr. Belgrade was a man with a conscience, and, grateful for his life, he
rewarded his preserver by a clerkship of importance. The duties of this
office he discharged faithfully for three years, when the death of the
head clerk left a vacancy, and when Arch was nineteen he received the
situation.

Through these three years he had been a close student. Far into the night
he pored over his books, and, too proud to go to school, he hired a
teacher and was taught privately. At twenty he was quite as well educated
as nine-tenths of the young men now turned out by our fashionable
colleges.

Rumors of Margie Harrison's triumphs reached him constantly, for Margie
was a belle and a beauty now. Her parents were dead, and she had been
left to the guardianship of Mr. Trevlyn, at whose house she made her
home, and where she reigned a very queen. Old Trevlyn's heart at last
found something beside his diamonds to worship, and Margie had it all her
own way.

She came into the store of Belgrade and Co. one day, and asked to look
at some laces. Trevlyn was the only clerk disengaged, and with a very
changeable face he came forward to attend to her. He felt that she would
recognize him at once--that she would remember where she had seen him the
last time--a house-breaker! She held his reputation in her keeping.

His hand trembled as he took down the laces--she glanced at his face. A
start of surprise--a conscious, painful blush swept over her face. He
dropped the box, and the rich laces fell over her feet.

"Pardon me," he said hurriedly, and, stooping to pick them up, the little
glove he had stolen on that night, and which he wore always in his bosom,
fell out, and dropped among the laces.

She picked it up with a little cry.

"The very glove that I lost four years ago! And you are--" she stopped
suddenly.

He paled to the lips, but, lifting his head proudly, said: "Go on. Finish
the sentence. I can bear it."

"No, I will not go on. Let the memory die,