clear, girlish voice that he knew as well as he knew his own,
directly behind him. He turned, with a quickly beating heart, and saw
Eltje Vanderveer. She was walking between her father and Snyder Appleby.
They had already passed without seeing him, and had evidently just arrived
by an early morning train from Euston.

Rod's first impulse was to run after them; and, starting to do so, he was
only a step behind them when he heard Snyder say: "He must have money,
because he refused a hundred dollars that the Major offered him. At any
rate we'll hear from him soon enough if he gets hard up or into trouble.
He isn't the kind of a----"

But Rod had already turned away, and what he wasn't, in Snyder's opinion,
he never knew.

He had hardly resumed his seat, when there was a merry jingle on the
floor beside him, and a quantity of silver coins began to roll in all
directions. The nervous old lady of the bags and bundles had dropped her
purse, and now she stood gazing at her scattered wealth, the very image
of despair.

"Never mind, ma'am," said Rod, cheerily, as he began to capture the truant
coins. "I'll have them all picked up in a moment." It took several minutes
of searching here and there, under the seats, and in all sorts of
out-of-the-way hiding places, before all the bits of silver were
recovered, and handed to their owner.

She drew a great sigh of relief as she counted her money and found that
none was lost. Then, beaming at the boy through her spectacles, she said:
"Well, thee is an honest lad; and, if thee'll look after my bags while I
get my ticket, and then help me to the train, I'll give thee a quarter."

Rod was on the point of saying, politely: "I shall be most happy to do
anything I can for you, ma'am; but I couldn't think of accepting pay for
it," when the thought of his position flashed over him. A quarter would
buy him a breakfast, and it would be honorably earned too. Would it not be
absolutely wrong to refuse it under the circumstances? Thus thinking, he
touched his cap, and said: "Certainly I will do all I can to help you,
ma'am, and will be glad of the chance to earn a quarter."

When the old lady had procured her ticket, and Rod had received the
first bit of money he had ever earned in his life by helping her to a
comfortable seat in the right car, she would have detained and questioned
him, but for her fear that he might be carried off. So she bade him hurry
from the car as quickly as possible,