Five o'clock on Thursday afternoon found Mr. Randall Clayton hovering around the grounds of the more democratic Hotel Manhattan, while the early birds of fashion sought the more pretentious splendor of the Oriental.

There was an anxious look upon the young man's face, and deep hollows under his eyes told of unaccustomed vigils. A couple of wandering peris gazed wishfully at the hand bundle carefully enveloped in silvery tissue paper. It was true that dark blue Russian violets, the starry forget-me-not, and the peerless lilies of the valley were therein hidden, but a keener emotion than expectant love shone in the young man's haggard eyes.

He was anxiously gazing around for the now well known form of Madame Raffoni. Clayton dared not exhibit himself before the couple of hundred staring eyes upon the pavilion and broad porticos.

An unknown fear of being entrapped drove him restlessly about.

"Would to God that Jack Witherspoon had arrived!" muttered the lover. "I may have the trap sprung on me at any moment. Another week; a long, long week! And God knows what may not happen in that time." Some burning fever gnawed at his unquiet heart, some veiled danger weighed him down.

Clayton was waiting for the approach of the wife of that mysterious musical director whom he had never seen.

A fortunate sort of lingua Franca had been patched up between the unsuspicious Clayton and the dark-eyed duenna. A few words of German, a little scattered French, and a bit of gibberish English enabled the two to hold occasional brief and amiable intercourse.

"What language does she really speak?" often cried the baffled
Clayton to the mocking Irma.

"Only pure Czech, my comrade," laughed the diva. "And I will teach you the softest language of Love myself when we wander back into the blue Bohemian mountains to proud old Georgsburg. My father was a Magyar, my mother," she softly said, "a Czech princess."

While Clayton moved around, cautiously exhibiting himself as agreed upon, his mind was agitated with a hundred unknown fears. He knew not the designs of his panther-footed enemies.

To his astonishment, Robert Wade was absent the whole last business day of the year from the Western Trading Company's offices, and this, too, when every pen was busied up to five o'clock.

And, the momentous election was to occur in the morning!

He had lingered with his own annual summary until three o'clock, when the dejected face of Somers, the head accountant, had appeared at his office door. "I have a telegram that Mr. Wade is sick in his bed. I am to take the consolidated accounts up to him to-night."

And so Randall Clayton handed over his papers without a word. "It will probably be the last account I will ever render here," he savagely mused, as he clashed his roll-top desk. "I wish that I had broken it all off when Wade brought on the half quarrel. I should have taken a friend with me, drawn out my little hoard, gone West and faced Worthington before he successfully works this infamous deal.

"Now I am powerless. He may tell us both to go to the devil."

And then Clayton sadly remembered that he depended only on Jack Witherspoon's mere hearsay for any proofs of wrong-doing. "Yes! I've only Jack's eagerness to marry that dainty Francine Delacroix to thank for my fortune—if I ever get it. A woman whom I never have seen decides my whole destiny, while I would give my life up, my last drop of blood, for Irma!"

Ah! All unknown to him, a dozen busy minds were weaving snares for his wandering feet. While Clayton, at last, saw Madame Raffoni cautiously approaching, in his superb Fifth Avenue residence, the sick man, Robert Wade, was closeted with the wolfish-eyed Arthur Ferris, the parchment-faced Somers, and four of the seven directors of the Trading Company.

On guard, lingering around Clayton's apartment, two mercantile agent's spies were waiting to pipe him off and report his every movement secretly to the returned Ferris, now breathless with anxiety for the greatest financial coup of the season.

Mr. Fritz Braun was artfully busied at Magdal's Pharmacy with giving Timmins a few last directions, and with the quiet destruction of a few necessary professional memoranda which he did not care to leave behind as dangerous weapons in the hands of the law or any thieving clerk.

In the pocket of Mr. Fritz Braun's well-known brown overcoat now reposed a bulky envelope, with a passport for Mr. and Mrs. August Meyer, his Frankfort bank exchange, and several letters of introduction to responsible merchants in Upper Germany. He was, at least, armed for flight, and fortified beyond all attack.

Ben Timmins looked forward, with delight, to a six-months' suzerainty of his master's drug business. "I have given Mr. Lilienthal my power of attorney," said Braun soberly, "and I figure that you should turn him in at least two hundred dollars a week profit, and also keep the stock up. He will look in once or twice a week. If you need help, he will get you a man. If you don't do your duty, he will promptly kick you out."

"Thank you, sir," submissively remarked Timmins, who felt sure of declaring himself an equal cash dividend every week.

"Now remember," said Braun, "I am going over to see Lilienthal. If any one asks for me, I have gone over the water, that's all.

"For how long, is nobody's business, and you can refer all inquiries to Lilienthal direct. All that you have to do is to mind your business and mine. Lilienthal will let you know when I am coming back, and advise you."

The two lovers had met, far away at Manhattan Beach, after Madame Raffoni had discreetly piloted Clayton over to a sandy hollow where a half-burned spar gave a convenient resting-place, before Fritz Braun and Lilienthal had finished an acrimonious settlement of some private money matters.

"I'm not a wolf," growled Braun. "You square up as if you were never going to see me again. You need me more than I need you."

They were in the safe seclusion of the "Private Room" of the Newport
Art Gallery, judiciously vacated for the occasion, when a strange
fear took possession of the sly pleasure pander, Mr. Adolph
Lilienthal.

"See here, Braun," he huskily said, a mean suspicion seizing upon him, "You're not cutting stick for good! You're not going to 'blow on me' and 'give me away!' By God! I believe it," he said in fright, as he noted Braun's pale face.

"It's two months since I've seen Irma Gluyas. Damn you! You've sent her over to the other side, and got all your papers safe! You've turned revenue spy! I see your game!"

Before the words were out of his mouth, Braun had dragged the venal scoundrel down in a strangler's grip. Planting his knee on his chest, he hissed, "One more word and I'll throttle you here! I can go out by the side entrance! You dare not scream! You fool! Don't you know Irma, the pretty baggage, cleared out six weeks ago with a New York millionaire whom she picked up?"

"Swear to me that you'll keep your mouth shut or I'll go out and denounce you now. I have nothing to lose. You have. You have robbed me in our past dealings. You are rich and I am poor. I am going to follow that woman over the world till I find her, for I loved her. That's all! Swear that you'll keep my secrets or I'll kill you now. I've burned every paper I have in the world."

When Braun's desperate mood had passed, he allowed the pleading man to rise, and then listened morosely as Lilienthal, the veriest coward at heart, begged for a reconciliation. "I didn't know of your trouble," gasped Lilienthal. "See here, if you'll go on to Hamburg and Bremen and fix up that 'phenacetine' business for me, I'll advance you five thousand dollars now. I didn't know you were so hard up." He whispered an address in the victorious druggist's ear.

The half-crazed gamester felt that he had gone too far, and in half an hour he departed richer by a cheque for five thousand dollars.

But his mind was far away on Manhattan Beach, with the wandering lovers, as he told Lilienthal that he should not call again. "I'll jump on the first steamer I can catch! Timmins knows all. Just watch him, and don't put yourself in his power, till I return. He can run the shop to a good profit in 'dope' and drinks till I am with you again. I'm damned near crazy at losing that woman." And the cowardly Lilienthal believed his rugged master.

When he had stalked away through the snaplock-guarded private entrance, there came over Lilienthal's face a spasm of deadly hatred. "The dirty dog!" he growled, as he unlocked a cabinet and drank heavily. "It must be true. This young fellow Clayton is here on duty every day; he looks wolfish, too. I wonder if he really loved the girl. Well, I shall soon have my day. If Braun ever presents that letter in Hamburg the friends there will have received my secret message by our No. II, who goes over this trip. A walk around the docks, and a knife stab in the back will settle Braun. He knows too much to be allowed to run loose in Europe. He would like to spoil our game; he shall spoil his own." And the traitor hastened away to entrap Braun, little dreaming that the acute druggist would never trust himself to the hands of the "gang" at Hamburg.

Randall Clayton had been startled by Madame Raffoni's eager disclosure as he approached the place of rendezvous. He had studied the still handsome face of the disguised Leah Einstein when she told him that the FrÄulein was really ill and most unhappy. He managed to pick out from her dialect that the diva had been plunged in some secret sorrow.

Quietly restraining himself, he watched the voluptuous form of the Jewess mingle with the crowd of guests on the hotel terrace. "That poor woman, a worn-out theater beauty, is without guile. What can this mean?"

He had rightly judged the good-hearted Leah's concern, and he never knew of the long hours of the discarded mistress' ministrations to the "reigning beauty."

Timorous at heart, Leah Einstein's evil career had been only one of petty wheedling craft, and an easy self-surrender.

Violence she both feared and abhorred, and now, in the wane of her beauty, she was easily content with such crumbs of money profit as could be picked up by an easy code of a plastic surface morality which covered only her petty intrigues.

Loyal to Irma Gulyas, Randall Clayton dared not question the poor mock duenna; in fact, her jargon vocabulary would have failed her, but there had been no deceit in the sympathetic tears which clung to Madame Raffoni's eyelids.

Seated on a half-burned spar, there where the roar of the restless waves reached their ears, with her face veiled, the Magyar witch awaited her all unsuspicious lover. The golden sunset faded now far in the west, the piled up purple clouds were turning blacker, and around them

"The mists arose, the waters swelled,"
"Gulls screamed, their flight recalling."

The woman's heart was racked with the deceit which had entrapped a man she now madly loved.

The freshening wind was driving the black smoke of the steamers, far out at sea, in long funereal wreaths, athwart the foaming wake, and the silver-sailed schooners began to reef, in anticipation of the coming storm.

An infinite tenderness seized upon Randall Clayton as he motioned to Madame Raffoni to leave them, and then took that beloved head to its shelter upon his breast.

His heart panted for the day when they could be all in all to each other. He felt the clouding spell of some mysterious enmity descending upon them, and clouding their love as he kissed the white and trembling hands which had so nervously clasped his own. For Irma Gluyas feared for her own life. She dared not betray the tiger-like Fritz Braun, whose veiled scheme of plunder or blackmail she could not fathom.

Hitherto all had gone well with them, in their merry will-o'-the-wisp game with Irma's jealous unknown guardians, with his concealed enemies.

But Clayton well knew that no mere pretense would baffle Arthur
Ferris' thorough knowledge of all of his past social habits.

He dared not openly quarrel with Ferris until Jack Witherspoon's return. He only lived now to see the Detroit lawyer speeding west, far on ahead of the deceitful Ferris, who would be detained in New York by the quiet consummation of the big deal.

Clayton was but too well aware that his only weapon was his knowledge of Ferris' secret marriage—an outrage upon Alice Worthington's unguarded girlhood.

And yet he dared not openly use that weapon; how easy for the old capitalist to frame a suave excuse for the "maimed rites" of that Western bridal.

One longing burned now in Clayton's heart, the honest wish to find some dignified and safe place of meeting with the woman upon whom he would shower the gold soon to be his own.

"If anything should happen," he thought.

Of course, his own face was too well known to adopt any mere hiding tactics. Irma was ever fearful of her jealous artist guardians, and in this lovely evening hour the lover's heart rose up in all its stormy tenderness to beg her to lift the veil from her incognito.

Even while they murmured again their vows and drifted away into dreams of the unclouded future, the heavens were blackening around them.

Irma seemed strangely frightened as she cowered in her lover's arms, while he begged her to lift the veil of her privacy.

"I must be with you—near you," he cried. "Listen! I have even now grave matters hanging over me which may summon me suddenly away from you. You know not my abode. You cannot write or telegraph safely to my office.

"There are veiled spies, jealous rivals, there, who would rob me of place, power, and the money which will yet be ours, in the dear far-off Danube land.

"You have been ill, distressed," he fondly said. "Nay, do not deny it! Madame Raffoni has told me all."

"My God!" whispered Irma. "She has told you"—

"Only that you have suffered, my darling," said Clayton, folding her to his breast.

"Ah! I must make an end of it!" the loyal lover cried, as Irma lay sobbing on his breast. "If I could only come to you; how shall I know? Can you trust no one? There is Madame Raffoni," said Clayton.

"She knows where my office is. I have bribed her, with flattery and a few little kindnesses, to come and tell me of you, several times, when we have been separated in these long weeks. We have not even gone to the 'Bavaria'; I have shown her my office. I care not to force myself upon your loyal secrecy. I respect the promise upon which your artistic future depends; but think of me. If you were ill, and we were separated by Fate, I should go mad! I could not live! Can you not trust her to bring me to you?" Fear and love were striving now in the singer's throbbing heart.

The Magyar witch clasped her arms around her gallant lover in a mad access of tenderness. "And you do love me so, Randall," she cried, in a storm of tears.

"More than my life," said the man who now felt her heart beating wildly against his own.

"Ah! God!" sobbed Irma. "If we had only met in other days, in another land, in my own dear country!"

"Listen, Irma," pleaded Clayton. "I will soon take you away, far over the seas."

"In a few weeks I shall be free, and you shall be my own, my very own! For I will then come to you, free to give you all that life and love can give.

"But promise me now that Madame Raffoni shall lead me to you if you need me. You can trust her. I will come to her home. I cannot bear this agony, and I am watched, also!"

Even as he spoke, the heavens blackened and a stormy drift of rain swept athwart the sky. There was a muttering roll of thunder. The white-crested waves dashed menacingly upon the shore!

Irma Gluyas clung to her lover as the affrighted Madame Raffoni came rushing toward them for shelter in the storm. The red lightning flashed, and the fury of the storm was upon them. It was a wild tempest which raged around them. The women were helpless with fear.

In despair, Randall Clayton gazed at the distant hotels; there was shelter and safety. But now a new fear beset him. His well-known identity, Irma's marked beauty, the strange attendant duenna, there would be certain discovery and scandal. And he would be Ferris' easy victim if discovered.

Irma Gluyas shrieked as she clung to her lover and bade him save her as the wild lightning bolts rent the darkness. It was a horrid elemental tumult!

A few hundred yards away a heavy closed carriage was slowly creeping along the drive between the hotels. "Run for your life!" shouted Clayton to the eager Madame Raffoni. "Stop that carriage. Offer him anything, everything! I will carry her. I must save her."

Bending himself to the task, Clayton raised the fainting form of Irma Gluyas. Her long hair lowered, swept around her in the storm; her sculptured arms clung to him, and her warm heart thrilled him as he sped on through the driving torrent. He was possessed with Love's last delirium.

In the violence of the storm, Clayton could only motion "forward" as he closed the door of the carriage and the frightened horses set off at a mad gallop. The inmates of the carriage never saw the bridge as the vehicle swayed from side to side in the blue-flamed lightning flashes.

They were nearing Brooklyn when, in the still driving storm,
Clayton descended and procured some restoratives at a pharmacy.

He poured a draught of strong wine between the affrighted woman's pallid lips, and then whispered, "You must tell me where to take you. It is life or death now."

And then Irma Gluyas, her head resting on Madame Raffoni's bosom, feebly whispered, "To my home, 192 Layte Street."

There was not a word spoken as, in the midnight darkness of the storm, the horses struggled along until, under the shelter of the high houses, the carriage stopped before the desolate-looking old mansion.

There was a look of terror on Madame Raffoni's face which was not lost upon Clayton. "Get the door open," he hoarsely cried. "I will carry her in. Then, I swear to you, I will leave her at once."

The strong man sprang from his place, and in a few moments he stood within the veiled splendors of the old drawing-room.

Kneeling by the bed, wherein he had deposited the senseless woman,
Clayton chafed her marble hands in an agony of despair.

But, even in his lover's exaltation, he listened to Madame Raffoni, who knelt before him in passionate adjuration. "Go, go!" she cried in broken pathos. "I will come to you to-morrow."

And she dragged him to the door. "I will all do; everything! I swear! Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!"

With one last despairing look, raining passionate kisses upon the marble lips of the woman he loved, Randall Clayton left the dusky magnificence of the superb apartment, and only halted at the door long enough to whisper to the Raffoni, "Bring me to her to-morrow, and I will make you rich!"

And the poor woman dumbly covered his hands with obedient kisses.
"Go, go!" she cried. "I will come!"

And, touched with the woman's frantic fears, Randall Clayton sprang into the carriage. Through the blinding storm he had reached the New York side before he thought of his own movements, of the morrow, of his coming friend, and of his wary enemies.

Then he resolutely made up his mind to fight the warring Fates to a finish.

He drove to the Astor House, dismissed his driver with a ransom fee, and there hid himself in an upper room.

When he presented himself at the half-deserted office of the Western Trading Company, upon the next morning, he was clad in unfamiliar garb.

His blood-shot eyes told of a vigil of mental suffering, and he dared say nothing as he gruffly bowed when Mr. Somers told him of Robert Wade's continued illness.

"I am going down to the election," said the old accountant. "And so you will be in charge, as Mr. Ferris has not been heard from. There is no one here but you to represent the management."

"Trapped," muttered Clayton, who listened every moment for some tidings of the woman whose silken hair had wound its delicate meshes around him in the storm. "Dying; dead, perhaps," he groaned, in an agony of excitement, and then and there he swore that, upon the arrival of Witherspoon he would leave the cave of his enemies, await his fate, and bear Irma Gluyas away to farther and fairer lands.

The long morning dragged on in a semi-stupor as he sat there listening to the hollow footfall of the casual passers-by.

And yet there was no word from Madame Raffoni, the only holder of the secret of Irma Gluyas' life. His foot was on the threshhold to leave at last, when Arthur Ferris calmly entered.

Randall Clayton mastered himself with a mighty effort, as Ferris glibly murmured, "I am only here for a few moments! Come into the private office."

The few minutes before they were at their ease in Robert Wade's impregnable sanctum enabled Clayton to steel himself against the secret bridegroom's duplicity. Clayton's quick eye noted Ferris' satchel, his top-coat and umbrella carelessly thrown down on Wade's reading-table.

"Have you been at the rooms?" carelessly remarked Clayton, tossing
Ferris' private keys upon the table. "No," curtly replied Ferris.
"I came here directly from the train. I wished to stop and see my
mother and sister; but Wade's illness has upset all my plans.

"I have to go on to Philadelphia at once on some private business for the Chief. You know he is a very heavy stockholder in the Cramp Shipbuilding Company. I will not be back for several days."

"And what about the election?" deliberately replied Clayton, now anxious to draw his enemy out. "I have nothing to do with that," said Ferris, dropping his eyes to veil a slight agitation. "Wade has all that in charge, and he has given Somers his proxy."

"I thought that you held Worthington's private power of attorney," stoutly said Randall Clayton.

"Only for his outside matters, Clayton," coaxingly said Ferris. "The fact is, we may expect many changes. Hugh has several plans of great importance in his mind.

"Yes; I have lived in an atmosphere of change for some time, Ferris," said Clayton, bluntly. "I have only been waiting for your return to consult with you about giving up our joint apartment.

"I reserved that privilege on May 1st, and you can either keep the rooms or sublet them. I have paid the rental for the last three months in your absence."

"See here, Clayton," sharply said Ferris, throwing off the mask. "I am not a man for any mysteries. I don't know why I should be forced to tell you things that I do not know myself.

"Now, I will be several days busy with these outside matters at Philadelphia. You had the one opportunity of your life the other day.

"I expect that you will have reconsidered your refusal to Wade, to obey Hugh Worthington's orders by my return."

"So you know all about it, do you?" fiercely retorted Randall Clayton. "I fancied that Wade was dealing directly with Hugh, himself, by the tone of the Chief's letters and the telegrams which I have received."

"The matter has been referred to me," hotly answered Ferris, who dared not openly use his new power. "But I will not wait here to discuss this matter. I may miss my train."

Arthur Ferris sharply rang a bell, and then, with a nod of recognition, directed the young Einstein to take his traps down stairs and call him a carriage.

The door clanged and the two secret enemies were left facing each other.

"I had fancied," said Clayton, bitterly, "that a lifetime spent in Hugh Worthington's service would at least win me a dismissal at first hands.

"Wade has tried to force me to throw up a position for which I was previously named by Worthington. I imagined that the Chief was really going abroad. He seems to have changed his plans. I have no means of reaching him direct.

"And now, sir, you will find the keys of our rooms with the janitor on your return. All that I wish to know is whether I shall deal with you or Wade in giving my final answer to the suspended orders for me to go West."

"You stand ready to throw up a life position?" harshly cried Ferris, white with secret rage pausing with his hand on the door.

"I shall certainly wait until I hear from Mr. Worthington," gravely answered Clayton. "It matters little about me. Your own life position is secure!"

"What do you mean by that?" cried Ferris, springing forward in a sudden anger which made him forget all his plans of crafty concealment.

But the tall Westerner, with one wave of his arm, swept Ferris' delicate form away from the door and passed out of the presence of the budding capitalist.

Arthur Ferris cast stealthy glances to right and left as he sought the elevator. He breathed freer when he reached the sidewalk.

Fortunately, no one had overheard the unseemly quarrel.

His hand was on the carriage door when his glances fell upon the questioning face of Emil Einstein.

"Anything further, sir?" demanded the eager office boy. "Yes! Jump in with me and ride down to the Pennsylvania Ferry. I may need you."

Ferris' brain was in a whirl. He had intended to double around and reach Wade's house, where he was a secret guest, during the excitable ordeal of the election.

Too well he knew the dangers of setting his own foot in Wall Street. Keen brokers, great operators, lynx-eyed newspaper reporters would soon corner him.

His slightest word would be misconstrued, and there was still time for some unforeseen plot before the polls of the stockholders' election closed at three o'clock.

Clayton's defiant manner had aroused his jealousy to a keen rage. "Does the fool know anything of my marriage?" he mused. "How could he?" Ferris smiled, for his girl wife was still in Tacoma, by her father's side, and the marriage had been a secret one.

The crafty lawyer hated Clayton, at heart, for too well he knew that no word clouding Clayton's character could be uttered unchallenged in Alice Worthington's presence.

Once he had tried, to probe her opinions, with faint sneers, but his voice had died away under the indignant protest of the heiress.

"I do not know who has poisoned my father's mind," resolutely said the Little Sister, "but Randall Clayton has been the brother of my heart, and always will be. If he had never left us we would all be happier to-day."

The clear-browed woman did not know how truly this arrow had sped to its mark. It silenced forever Arthur Ferris, and lent a new caution to the scheming plans of the old money grabber.

"If I only had my cipher book," was the first thought of the excited Ferris, "I must telegraph to Hugh and put him on his guard. What the devil can Clayton have picked up?"

There was yet two weeks before the final arrangement of the "great deal," and the repayment of the two millions could be substantially arranged.

As the carriage dashed along to the Christopher Street Ferry, Ferris rapidly made up his plan of action. "I can go over to Taylor's Hotel at Jersey City. Old Somers will cast the majority vote at a quarter of three.

"I can call him up at the down-town office by telephone, and then telegraph direct to old Hugh at Tacoma.

"And Wade must come over to me at Philadelphia and spend a day or so, for appearance's sake. But a light rein is needed for this wild ass of the West, Clayton. Oh! to have him out there in Cheyenne for one month.

"Yes! By Jove, I have it! Hugh must invite him to meet him there.
I will telegraph him, and the old man can smooth Clayton down."

A sudden desire to know of Randall Clayton's private life seized upon Ferris, who already contemplated a sweet revenge. "Damn him! I must keep him and Alice apart. She would side with him, on sentimental grounds. But, as soon as I get back, I can cipher Hugh that he must settle this fellow, in some way, on that Western visit. The old fox can find a way, and both Alice and I will be out of it."

Deliberately selecting two one hundred dollar bills from his wallet, Arthur Ferris held them up to the astonished gaze of Einstein. "Mr. Clayton has been a little strange in his behavior lately," he said. "In some tiff he has thrown up his old rooms, and is going to move. I will be away three or four days. When I come back, I want to know just where he is located, and—all about him; who his friends are, and so on. There is more where this came from."

"I understand," smoothly answered Emil, pocketing the bills with a grin.

In the meantime Ferris had scribbled a few words on a card. He stopped the carriage. "Jump out and take a coupe, and get instantly down to Wall and Broad. You'll find Mr. Somers waiting in the election-room. Tell him not to leave there till I get him on the 'phone from Jersey City. And my address you can give him as Lafayette House, Philadelphia. I'll be there three days." The lie was deliberate, and even the triple spy believed him.

The long hours crawled away while Randall Clayton resolutely paced his lonely office. Only the busy under-accountants came in now and then for a word of directions, and the ticking of the office clock sounded like the hollow tapping of hammers upon coffin-lids to the solitary man who was crazed with his loving anxiety to hear from the woman who now ruled his every thought.

He forgot the absence of Einstein in his eager waiting for some intelligence of the woman whom he had shielded from the storm. Poor Madame Raffoni had mumbled some obscure words about "die herz-kranke."

"Heartsick, my God! I am heartsick," cried Randall Clayton. "And, she may be alone; there may be no one to send."

Clayton tried to recall the last directions which he had given to the disguised Leah Einstein. All that he could recall was the murmured pledge, "I will come, I will come!"

The lover's heart told him that Ferris' spies would now follow in his every movement. He lingered, in a trance of agony, until long after the parchment-faced Somers had returned from Wall and Broad Street.

"It was a very quiet election," murmured Somers, who started at the appearance of the young man's haggard face. He was astonished to see Clayton lingering there to the confines of darkness.

The faithful old tool of Mammon had crawled back to turn all his combination knobs and cast a last glance over the rooms into which his life had grown as the silkworm into its cocoon.

"You must go away, my boy," kindly said old Somers, "you need a long rest."

"Yes, yes," mournfully replied Clayton, thinking of the five days of agony before Jack Witherspoon would arrive to run the gauntlet of the treacherous Ferris. "I must go away—go away—and, have a long, long rest!"

The old accountant watched his listless steps as he departed. "Head or heart—which?" he murmured. "That man is in a bad way."