fore his walk was done, find
himself, after all, under the glare of its lamps. The moth hovers in
wide circles round the candle before it ventures its wings in the flame.
And so it was with Tom; but the catastrophe came at last.

One evening about three weeks before the time fixed for the Easter trip
with Charlie, Tom felt in tolerably dull. He had been neglecting his
work during several days for novels of the lowest and most sensational
type. Over these he had dawdled till his brain had become muddled with
their unreal incidents and impure suggestions, and now that they were
done he felt fit for nothing. He could not settle down to work, he had
no friends to turn to, and so he put his hat on his head and sallied out
into the streets to seek there the variety he could not find indoors.

As usual, his steps led him to the low theatre about which he was so
curious, and of which he heard so much from his fellow-students. It was
half-past seven, and people were beginning to crowd round the door,
waiting for it to open. Tom, standing on the other side of the
pavement, watched them with a painful fascination.

"Shall I go for once?" he asked himself. Then he strolled up to the
playbill and read it.

As he was doing so some one slapped him on the shoulder, and, turning
quickly round, he found himself face to face with his old acquaintance
Gus Burke and another youth.

Gus, who was still small of stature, though fully nineteen years of age,
was arrayed in the height of the fashion. As Tom regarded him he felt
his own coat become more shabby and his hat older, and he wished he had
brought his dogskin gloves and cane. Gus was smoking, too, a cigarette,
and very distinguished and gentlemanly Tom thought it looked. He felt,
as he regarded his brilliant and unexpected acquaintance, that he was
rather glad those people who were standing at the theatre door should
see him accosted in so familiar a way by such a hero. And Gus's friend
was no less imposing--more so, indeed, for he wore an eyeglass.

Tom was so astonished at this unexpected meeting that he had noticed all
this long before he found words to return his old schoolfellow's
salutation.

Gus, however, relieved him of his embarrassment.

"Tom Drift, upon my honour! How are you, old horse, and how's your
mother? Who'd have thought of running up against you like this?"

Tom tried to look as much at his ease as he could as he replied,--

"Why, Gus, old man,