hundred and fifty dollars from you. Why
should I not refuse your offer as you refused mine?"

"Bob," said Herbert, taking him by the hand, "that eight dollars was a
reserve fund, it was all that stood between you and me and starvation
or what is almost as bad--public charity. I appreciated as you little
knew your generous offer, and it cut me to see how hurt you felt at my
refusal to take the money. But I thought of the possibility of sickness
or accident, and realized how much help those few dollars would prove in
such a time. Again I felt that the money would do me no good. I know now
that it would not have, for I should simply have used it up and would
then have been no nearer, if so near, solving the problem that pressed
me for an answer--namely, how to earn sufficient means with which to buy
bread and procure a shelter for myself."

"I think you were right, Herbert," replied Bob, thoughtfully. "I
couldn't think so then, however, but it is plain to me now."

"I know I was right. It was the suffering I went through in those dreary
winter months and the miserable drudgery I was forced to perform that at
last gave me a knowledge of this business. It was an education to me,
Bob, of a most practical character, and now that it is all over I can
only feel glad that I was forced out of my comfortable clerkship into
the cold wintry street that had so sunny an ending."

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE CONSPIRATORS' FATE.

A few weeks after the trial of Gunwagner for false imprisonment he was
again brought before the bar of justice to answer with Felix Mortimer to
the charge of conspiring to kidnap Herbert Randolph. Able counsel were
employed by the old villain, and a hard fight was made for liberty. But
the charges were so well sustained by the evidence of Herbert and Bob,
and that of the small boy who aided the latter in gaining admittance to
the fence's den, that the jury brought in a verdict of guilty.

Gunwagner was, accordingly, sentenced to serve a long term of
imprisonment at Sing Sing as a penalty for his villainous acts. He had
accumulated much money by crooked means, and now towards the end of his
life his own freedom was the price paid for the gold which now was
valueless to him.

Then came Felix Mortimer's turn. But for him Herbert Randolph would
never have fallen into the trouble that seemed to await him on his
arrival in New York. Young Mortimer, however, overreached himself. He
was not a match for Herbert