et" upon the door.

"Mr. Carroll gave up his office last Saturday," said the man in the
elevator. "The janitor said so, and they have taken his safe out for
rent. Guess he bust in the Wall Street shindy last week."

Out on the sidewalk the four looked at one another. The pretty
stenographer began to cry in a pocket-handkerchief edged with wide,
cheap lace.

"I call it a shame," she said, "and here I am owing for board, and--"

"Don't cry, May," said Day, with a caressing gesture towards her in
spite of the place. "I guess it will be all right. He has all our
addresses, and we shall hear, and you won't have a mite of trouble
getting another place."

"I think I am justified in telling you all not to worry in the least,
that you will be paid every dollar," said Allbright; but he looked
perplexed and troubled.

"It looks mighty black, his not sending us word he was going to close
the office," said Day; and then appeared the tall, lean man who
wanted his two thousand odd dollars. He did not notice them at all,
but started to enter the office-building.

"Come along quick before he comes back," whispered Day. He seized the
astonished girls each by an arm and hustled them up the street, and
Allbright, after a second's hesitation, followed them just as the
irate man emerged from the door.

Chapter XXVII

Arthur Carroll, when he had started on his drive with his wife and
sister that afternoon, was in one of those strenuous moods which seem
to make one's whole being tick with the clock-work of destiny and
cause everything else, all the environment, and the minor happenings
of life, to appear utterly idle. Even when he talked, and apparently
with earnestness, it was always with that realization of depths,
which made his own voice ring empty and strange in his ears. He heard
his wife and sister chatter with the sense of aloofness of the
inhabitant of another planet; he thought even of the financial
difficulties which harassed him, and had caused this very mood, with
that same sense of aloofness. When Anna wondered where Charlotte had
gone to walk, and Mrs. Carroll remarked on the possibility of their
overtaking her, his mind made an actual effort to grasp that simple
idea. He was running so deep, and with such awful swiftness, in his
own groove of personal tragedy, that the daughter whom he loved, and
had seen only a few moments ago, seemed almost left out of sight of
his memory. However, all the while the usual tr