y, or just
been delivering a heavy deposit into the hands of his banker.

Once provided with pecuniary resources, Zack felt himself at liberty
to indulge forthwith in a holiday of his own granting. He opened the
festival by a good long ride in a cab, with a bottle of pale ale and a
packet of cigars inside, to keep the miserable state of the weather
from affecting his spirits. He closed the festival with a visit to the
theater, a supper in mixed company, total self-oblivion, a bed at a
tavern, and a blinding headache the next morning. Thus much, in brief,
for the narrative of his holiday. The proceedings, on his part, which
followed that festival, claim attention next; and are of sufficient
importance, in the results to which they led, to be mentioned in detail.

The new morning was the beginning of an important day in Zack's life.
Much depended on the interviews he was about to seek with his new
friend, Mat, in Kirk Street, and with Mr. Blyth, at the turnpike in the
Laburnum Road. As he paid his bill at the tavern, his conscience was not
altogether easy, when he recalled a certain passage in his letter to
his mother, which had assured her that he was on the high road to
reformation already. "I'll make a clean breast of it to Blyth, and do
exactly what he tells me, when I meet him at the turnpike." Fortifying
himself with this good resolution, Zack arrived at Kirk Street, and
knocked at the private door of the tobacconist's shop.

Mat, having seen him from the window, called to him to come up, as
soon as the door was opened. The moment they shook hands, young Thorpe
noticed that his new friend looked altered. His face seemed to have
grown downcast and weary--heavy and vacant, since they had last met.

"What's happened to you?" asked Zack. "You have been somewhere in the
country, haven't you? What news do you bring back, my dear fellow? Good,
I hope?"

"Bad as can be," returned Mat, gruffly. "Don't you say another word to
me about it. If you do, we part company again. Talk of something else.
Anything you like; and the sooner the better."

Forbidden to discourse any more concerning his friend's affairs, Zack
veered about directly, and began to discourse concerning his own.
Candor was one of his few virtues: and he now confided to Mat the entire
history of his tribulations, without a single reserved point at any part
of the narrative, from beginning to end.

Without putting a question, or giving an answer, without