mployer, and
in a way slightly disgusted, but he was not in a position to cavil or
feel squeamish over apparent lack of honesty, and resolved at once to
ignore it.

"What do you wish me to do?" he continued after a moment. "I will do the
best I can for you and am ready to go to work now."

"You are to be at the office at eight o'clock sharp," replied Frye,
"take one hour for lunch, and remain till six." Then he added by way of
a spur to his slave's fidelity, "I am paying you seventy-five dollars a
month on the recommend of an important client of mine who wanted to
humor his son. It was your good luck to have this son's friendship, as
he belongs to a wealthy family. He is a spendthrift, of course, but that
is no matter, and all the better for us. Take my advice, and cultivate
him all you can. It may be the means of bringing us more business. What
I say to you I shall expect you to consider a professional secret and I
hope you will make good use of your time when with this young friend of
yours, and heed well what I have said to you."

That ended the interview and Albert was set at work copying legal
documents and at the same time trying to reconcile himself to his new
surroundings. That night he wrote to Alice: "I have hired out to a most
unmitigated old scoundrel, and yet one of the sharpest lawyers I ever
met. He assured me I must lay aside my conscience if I mean to succeed
and hinted that he might use me later on as a sort of spy upon Frank, I
imagine. He employs a stenographer of uncertain age who comes in and
takes dictation and does her work outside. The only stupid thing he has
said was to warn me not to flirt with her."

Then he wrote to his friend Frank, telling him where he was located,
thanking him for his assistance, and begging him to call at an early
date. After that he smoked for an hour in glum silence. His room was
small and cheerless, and, in comparison with his home quarters, a mere
den. But it was a question of saving, and the luxury of space, even, he
could not afford. There is no more lonesome place in the wide world than
a great city to one born and bred amid the freedom of the wide fields
and extended woodlands as Albert had been, and now that he was shut in
by brick walls all day, and imprisoned in one small room at night, with
a solitary window opening on an area devoted to ash barrels and garbage,
it made him homesick. He was a dreamer by nature and loved the music of
running brooks, the r