omeone to confide in, and you deserve my confidence. Let
me tell you, then, that I am employed in an office on Dearborn Street.
My pay is small, twelve dollars a week, but it would be enough to
support me if I had only myself to look out for. But I have a mother
in Milwaukee, and I have been in the habit of sending her four dollars
a week. That left me only eight dollars, which I found it hard to live
on, and there was nothing left for clothes."

"I can easily believe that," said Luke.

"I struggled along, however, as best I might, but last week I received
a letter from my mother saying that she was sick. Of course her
expenses were increased, and she wrote to know if I could send her a
little extra money. I have been living so close up to my income that I
absolutely had less than a dollar in my pocket. Unfortunately,
temptation came at a time when I was least prepared to resist it. One
of our customers from the country came in when I was alone, and paid
me fifty dollars in bills, for which I gave him a receipt. No one saw
the payment made. It flashed upon me that this sum would make my
mother comfortable even if her sickness lasted a considerable time.
Without taking time to think, I went to an express office, and
forwarded to her a package containing the bills. It started yesterday,
and by this time is in my mother's hands. You see the situation I am
placed in. The one who paid the money may come to the office at any
time and reveal my guilt."

"I don't wonder that you were dispirited," returned Luke. "But can
nothing be done? Can you not replace the money in time?"

"How can I? I have told you how small my salary is."

"Have you no friend or friends from whom you could borrow the money?"

"I know of none. I have few friends, and such as they are, are, like
myself, dependent on small pay. I must tell you, by the way, how we
became poor. My mother had a few thousand dollars, which, added to my
earnings, would have made us comparatively independent, but in an evil
hour she invested them in a California mine, on the strength of the
indorsement of a well-known financier of Milwaukee, Mr. Thomas
Browning----"

"Who?" asked Luke, in surprise.

"Thomas Browning. Do you know him?"

"I have seen him. He sometimes comes to Chicago, and stops at the
Sherman House."

"He recommended the stock so highly--in fact, he was the president of
the company that put it on the market--that my poor mother thought it
all right, a