ly for the office-boy.

"See if Mr. Hamlin is in his rooms."

The editor then sat down, and wrote rapidly as follows:--

DEAR MADAM,--You are as right as you are generous in supposing that
only ignorance of your address prevented the manager from previously
remitting the honorarium for your beautiful verses. He now begs to send
it to you in the manner you have indicated. As the verses have attracted
deserved attention, I have been applied to for your address. Should
you care to submit it to me to be used at my discretion, I shall feel
honored by your confidence. But this is a matter left entirely to your
own kindness and better judgment. Meantime, I take pleasure in accepting
"White Violet's" present contribution, and remain, dear madam, your
obedient servant,

THE EDITOR.

The boy returned as he was folding the letter. Mr. Hamlin was not only
NOT in his rooms, but, according to his negro servant Pete, had left
town an hour ago for a few days in the country.

"Did he say where?" asked the editor, quickly.

"No, sir: he didn't know."

"Very well. Take this to the manager." He addressed the letter, and,
scrawling a few hieroglyphics on a memorandum-tag, tore it off, and
handed it with the letter to the boy.

An hour later he stood in the manager's office. "The next number is
pretty well made up," he said, carelessly, "and I think of taking a day
or two off."

"Certainly," said the manager. "It will do you good. Where do you think
you'll go?"

"I haven't quite made up my mind."

CHAPTER II

"Hullo!" said Jack Hamlin.

He had halted his mare at the edge of an abrupt chasm. It did not appear
to be fifty feet across, yet its depth must have been nearly two
hundred to where the hidden mountain-stream, of which it was the banks,
alternately slipped, tumbled, and fell with murmuring and monotonous
regularity. One or two pine-trees growing on the opposite edge, loosened
at the roots, had tilted their straight shafts like spears over the
abyss, and the top of one, resting on the upper branches of a sycamore a
few yards from him, served as an aerial bridge for the passage of a boy
of fourteen to whom Mr. Hamlin's challenge was addressed.

The boy stopped midway in his perilous transit, and, looking down upon
the horseman, responded, coolly, "Hullo, yourself!"

"Is that the only way across this infernal hole, or the one you prefer
for exercise?" continued Hamlin, gravely.

The boy sat down on a bough,