money gave out.
He seemed suddenly struck by something.

"Why, what are you doing here?" he asked. I told him Bob and I were just
resting after a day of canvassing.

"Books!" he snorted. "I guess they won't make you rich. Now, how would you
like to be a reporter, if you have got nothing better to do? The manager of
a news agency down town asked me to-day to find him a bright young fellow
whom he could break in. It isn't much--$10 a week to start with. But it is
better than peddling books, I know."

He poked over the book in my hand and read the title. "Hard Times," he
said, with a little laugh, "I guess so. What do you say? I think you will
do. Better come along and let me give you a note to him now."

As in a dream, I walked across the street with him to his office and got
the letter which was to make me, half-starved and homeless, rich as
Croesus, it seemed to me. Bob went along, and before I departed from the
school a better home than I could give him was found for him with my
benefactor. I was to bring him the next day. I had to admit that it was
best so. That night, the last which Bob and I spent together, we walked up
and down Broadway, where there was quiet, thinking it over. What had
happened had stirred me profoundly. For the second time I saw a hand held
out to save me from wreck just when it seemed inevitable; and I knew it for
His hand, to whose will I was at last beginning to bow in humility that had
been a stranger to me before. It had ever been my own will, my own way,
upon which I insisted. In the shadow of Grace Church I bowed my head
against the granite wall of the gray tower and prayed for strength to do
the work which I had so long and arduously sought and which had now come to
me; the while Bob sat and looked on, saying clearly enough with his wagging
tail that he did not know what was going on, but that he was sure it was
all right. Then we resumed our wanderings. One thought, and only one, I had
room for. I did not pursue it; it walked with me wherever I went: She was
not married yet. Not yet. When the sun rose, I washed my face and hands in
a dog's drinking-trough, pulled my clothes into such shape as I could, and
went with Bob to his new home. That parting over, I walked down to 23 Park
Row and delivered my letter to the desk editor in the New York News
Association, up on the top floor.

He looked me over a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the
early hours I kept, told me that