s night near the end of February,
foreshadowing the early spring already nearly due. He had no umbrella,
or wish for one: the cool rain in his face was a refreshment and a
vivifier.

So the worst had come to the worst, and he had been living for nearly a
year on Sharlee Weyland's money, stolen from her by her father's false
friend. Wormwood and gall were the fruits that altruism had borne him.
Two casual questions had brought out the shameful truth, and these
questions could have been asked as easily a year ago as now.

Bitterly did the young man reproach himself now, for his criminal
carelessness in regard to the sources of Surface's luxurious income. For
the better part of a year he had known the old man for an ex-convict
whose embezzlings had run high into six figures. Yet he had gone on
fatuously swallowing the story that the money of which the old rogue was
so free represented nothing but the savings of a thrifty schoolteacher.
A dozen things came back to him now to give the lie to that tale. He
thought of the costly books that Surface was constantly buying; the
expensive repairs he had made in his rented house; the wine that stood
on the dinner-table every night; the casual statement from the old man
that he meant to retire from the school at the end of the present
session. Was there ever a teacher who could live like this after a dozen
years' roving work? And the probability was that Surface had never
worked at all until, returning to his own city, he had needed a position
as a cover and a blind.

Mathematical computations danced through the young man's brain. He
figured that their present scale of living must run anywhere from $3500
to $5000 a year. Surface's income from the school was known to be $900 a
year. His income from his lodger was $390 a year. This difference
between, say $4000 and $1290, was $2710 a year, or 4 per cent on some
$70,000. And this tidy sum was being filched from the purse of Charlotte
Lee Weyland, who worked for her living at an honorarium of $75 a month.

Queed walked with his head lowered, bent less against the rain than his
own stinging thoughts. At the corner of Seventh Street a knot of young
men, waiting under a dripping awning for a car that would not come,
cried out gayly to the Doc; they were Mercuries; but the Doc failed to
respond to their greetings, or even to hear them. He crossed the humming
street, northerly, with an experienced sureness acquired since his
exploit with