um never wholly succeeded in extricating himself from
the foggy uncertainty generated by that one brief interview. From the
moment Mr. Taggett was assigned a bench under the sheds, Mr. Slocum
saw little or nothing of him.

Mr. Taggett took lodging in a room in one of the most crowded of
the low boarding-houses,--a room accommodating two beds besides his
own: the first occupied by a brother neophyte in marble-cutting, and
the second by a morose middle-aged man with one eyebrow a trifle
higher than the other, as if it had been wrenched out of line by the
strain of habitual intoxication. This man's name was Wollaston, and
he worked at Dana's.

Mr. Taggett's initial move was to make himself popular in the
marble yard, and especially at the tavern, where he spent money
freely, though not so freely as to excite any remark except that the
lad was running through pretty much all his small pay,--a
recklessness which was charitably condoned in Snelling's bar-room. He
formed multifarious friendships, and had so many sensible views on
the labor problem, advocating the general extinguishment of
capitalists, and so on, that his admittance to the Marble Workers'
Association resolved itself into merely a question of time. The old
prejudice against apprentices was already wearing off. The quiet,
evasive man of few words was now a loquacious talker, holding his own
with the hardest hitters, and very skillful in giving offense to no
one. "Whoever picks up Blake for a fool," Dexter remarked one night,
"will put him down again." Not a shadow of suspicion followed Mr.
Taggett in his various comings and goings. He seemed merely a
good-natured, intelligent devil; perhaps a little less devilish and a
trifle more intelligent than the rest, but not otherwise different.
Denyven, Peters, Dexter, Willson, and others in and out of the Slocum
clique were Blake's sworn friends. In brief, Mr. Taggett had the
amplest opportunities to prosecute his studies. Only for a pained
look which sometimes latterly shot into his eyes, as he worked at the
bench, or as he walked alone in the street, one would have imagined
that he was thoroughly enjoying the half-vagabond existence.

The supposition would have been erroneous, for in the progress of
those fourteen days' apprenticeship Mr. Taggett had received a wound
in the most sensitive part of his nature: he had been forced to give
up what no man ever relinquishes without a wrench,--his own idea.

With the exce