ison Day.

"Oh, nothin', only it's ten days since he went, and I thought I'd
look round to see how things were lookin'. You s'pose he's comin'
back all right?"

"I haven't any reason to think anything else."

"Well, I thought I'd look around, and when I saw you I thought I'd
ask what you thought. The girls are kind of uneasy--that is, Sadie
is--May don't seem to fret much. Say!"

"What?"

"Did he pay you?"

"Yes, he did."

"Ain't he owin' you anything?"

"No, he is not."

The young man gave a whistle of relief. "Well, I s'pose he's all
right," he said. "He 'ain't paid the rest of us up yet, but I s'pose
it's safe enough."

A faithful, even an affectionate look came into the other man's face.
He remembered his suspicions about the watch, and reasoned from
premises. "I have no more doubt of him than I have of myself," he
replied.

"You s'pose the business is goin' on just the same, then?"

"Of course I do," Allbright replied, almost angrily. And then a man
who had just emerged from the street door coming from the elevator
accosted him.

"Can you tell me anything about a man by the name of Carroll that's
been running a sort of promoting business up in No. 233," he asked,
and his face looked reddened unnaturally. The young man thought he
had probably been drinking, but Allbright thought he looked angry.
The young man replied before Allbright opened his mouth.

"He's gone on a vacation," he said.

"Queer time of year for a vacation," snapped the man, who was long
and lean and full of nervous vibrations.

"He was overworked," said Harrison Day.

"Guess he overworked cheating me out of two thousand odd dollars,"
said the man, and both the others turned and stared at him.

Then Allbright spoke. "That is a statement no man has any right to
make about my employer unless he is in a position to prove it," he
said.

"That is so," said Harrison Day. He was a very small man, but he
danced before the tall, lean one, who looked as if all his flesh
might have resolved to muscle.

The man looked contemptuously down at him and spoke to Allbright. "So
he is your employer?" he said, in a sarcastic tone.

"Yes, he is."

"This young man's also, I presume."

"Yes, he is," declared Day. But the man only heeded Allbright's
response that he was.

"Well," said the man, "may I ask a question?"

"Yes, you may," said Day, pertly, "but it don't follow that we are
goin' to answer it."

"May I ask," said the man, ad