There came to Mr. Putchett oddly-clothed members of his own profession, and offered for sale securities whose numbers Mr. Putchett compared with those on a list of bonds stolen; men who deposited with him small articles of personal property--principally jewelry--as collaterals on small loans at short time and usurious rates; men who stood before him on the sidewalk, caught his eye, summoned him by a slight motion of the head, and disappeared around the corner, whither Mr. Putchett followed them only to promptly transact business and hurry back to his business-stand.

In fact, Mr. Putchett was very busy, and as in his case business invariably indicated profit, it was not wonderful that his rather unattractive face lightened and expressed its owner's satisfaction at the amount of business he was doing. Suddenly, however, there attacked Mr. Putchett the fate which, in its peculiarity of visiting people in their happiest hours, has been bemoaned by poets of genuine and doubtful inspiration, from the days of the sweet singer of Israel unto those of that sweet singer of Erin, whose recital of experience with young gazelles illustrates the remorselessness of the fate alluded to.

Plainly speaking, Mr. Putchett went suddenly under a cloud, for during one of his dashes around the corner after a man who had signaled him, and at the same time commenced to remove a ring from his finger, a small, dirty boy handed Mr. Putchett a soiled card, on which was penciled:

"Bayle is after you, about that diamond."

Despite the fact that Mr. Putchett had not been shaved for some days, and had apparently neglected the duty of facial ablution for quite as long a time, he turned pale and looked quickly behind him and across the street; then muttering "Just my luck!" and a few other words more desponding than polite in nature, he hurried to the Post-Office, where he penciled and dispatched a few postal-cards, signed in initials only, announcing an unexpected and temporary absence. Then, still looking carefully and often at the faces in sight, he entered a newspaper office and consulted a railway directory. He seemed in doubt, as he rapidly turned the leaves; and when he reached the timetable of a certain road running near and parallel to the seaside, the change in his countenance indicated that he had learned the whereabouts of a city of refuge.

An hour later Mr. Putchett, having to bid no family good-by, to care for no securities save those stowed away in his capacious pockets, and freed from the annoyance of baggage by reason of the fact that he had on his back the only outer garments that he owned, was rapidly leaving New York on a train, which he had carefully assured himself did not carry the dreaded Bayle.

Once fairly started, Mr. Putchett in some measure recovered his spirits.

He introduced himself to a brakeman by means of a cigar, and questioned him until he satisfied himself that the place to which he had purchased a ticket was indeed unknown to the world, being far from the city, several miles from the railroad, and on a beach where boats could not safely land. He also learned that it was not a fashionable Summer resort, and that a few farmhouses (whose occupants took Summer boarders) and an unsuccessful hotel were the only buildings in the place.

Arrived at his destination, Mr. Putchett registered at the hotel and paid the week's board which the landlord, after a critical survey of his new patron, demanded in advance.

Then the exiled operator tilted a chair in the barroom, lit an execrable cigar, and, instead of expressing sentiments of gratitude appropriate to the occasion, gave way to profane condemnations of the bad fortune which had compelled him to abandon his business.

He hungrily examined the faces of the few fishermen of the neighboring bay who came in to drink and smoke, but no one of them seemed likely to need money--certainly no one of them seemed to have acceptable collaterals about his person or clothing. On the contrary, these men, while each one threw Mr. Putchett a stare of greater or less magnitude, let the financier alone so completely that he was conscious of a severe wound in his self-esteem.

It was a strange experience, and at first it angered him so that he strode up to the bar, ordered a glass of best brandy, and defiantly drank alone; but neither the strength of the liquor nor the intensity of his anger prevented him from soon feeling decidedly lonely.

At the cheap hotel at which he lodged when in New York there was no one who loved him or even feared him, but there were a few men of his own kind who had, for purposes of mutual recreation, tabooed business transactions with each other, and among these he found a grim sort of enjoyment--of companionship, at least. Here, however, he was so utterly alone as to be almost frightened, and the murmuring and moaning of the surf on the beach near the hotel added to his loneliness a sense of terror.

Almost overcome by dismal forebodings, Mr. Putchett hurried out of the hotel and toward the beach. Once upon the sands, he felt better; the few people who were there were strangers, of course, but they were women and children; and if the expression of those who noticed him was wondering, it was inoffensive--at times even pitying, and Mr. Putchett was in a humor to gratefully accept even pity.

Soon the sun fell, and the people straggled toward their respective boarding-houses, and Mr. Putchett, to fight off loneliness as long as possible, rose from the bench on which he had been sitting and followed the party up the beach.

He had supposed himself the last person that left the beach, but in a moment or two he heard a childish voice shouting:

"Mister, mister! I guess you've lost something!"

Mr. Putchett turned quickly, and saw a little girl, six or seven years of age, running toward him. In one hand she held a small pail and wooden shovel, and in the other something bright, which was too large for her little hand to cover.

She reached the broker's side, turned up a bright, healthy face, opened her hand and displayed a watch, and said:

"It was right there on the bench where you were sitting. I couldn't think what it was, it shone so."

Mr. Putchett at first looked suspiciously at the child, for he had at one period of his life labored industriously in the business of dropping bogus pocketbooks and watches, and obtaining rewards from persons claiming to be their owners.

[Illustration: MR. PUTCHETT'S NEW FRIEND.]

Examining the watch which the child handed him, however, he recognized it as one upon which he had lent twenty dollars earlier in the day.

First prudently replacing the watch in the pocket of his pantaloons, so as to avoid any complication while settling with the finder, he handed the child a quarter.

"Oh, no, thank you," said she, hastily; "mamma gives me money whenever I need it."

The experienced operator immediately placed the fractional currency where it might not tempt the child to change her mind. Then he studied her face with considerable curiosity, and asked:

"Do you live here?"

"Oh, no," she replied; "we're only spending the Summer here. We live in New York."

Mr. Putchett opened his eyes, whistled, and remarked:

"It's very funny."

"Why, I don't think so," said the child, very innocently. "Lots of people that board here come from New York. Don't you want to see my well? I dug the deepest well of anybody to-day. Just come and see--it's only a few steps from here."

Mechanically, as one straggling with a problem above his comprehension, the financier followed the child, and gazed into a hole, perhaps a foot and a half deep, on the beach.

"That's my well," said she, "and that one next it is Frank's. Nellie's is way up there. I guess hers _would_ have been the biggest, but a wave came up and spoiled it."

Mr. Putchett looked from the well into the face of its little digger, and was suddenly conscious of an insane desire to drink some of the water. He took the child's pail, dipped some water, and was carrying it to his lips, when the child spoiled what was probably the first sentimental feeling of Mr. Putchett's life by hastily exclaiming:

"You mustn't drink that--it's salty!"

The sentimentalist sorrowfully put the bitter draught away, and the child rattled on:

"If you're down here to-morrow, I'll show you where we find scallop-shells; maybe you can find some with pink and yellow spots on them. _I've_ got some. If you don't find any, I'll give you one."

"Thank you," said her companion.

Just then some one shouted "Alice!" and the child exclaiming, "Mamma's calling me; good-by," hurried away, while the broker walked slowly toward the hotel with an expression of countenance which would have hidden him from his oldest acquaintance.

Mr. Putchett spent the evening on the piazza instead of in the barroom, and he neither smoked nor drank. Before retiring he contracted with the colored cook to shave him in the morning, and to black his boots; and he visited the single store of the neighborhood and purchased a shirt, some collars, and a cravat.

When in the morning he was duly shaved, dressed and brushed, he critically surveyed himself in the glass, and seemed quite dissatisfied.

He moved from the glass, spread a newspaper on the table, and put into it the contents of his capacious pockets. A second examination before the glass seemed more satisfactory in result, thus indicating that to the eye of Mr. Putchett his well-stuffed pockets had been unsightly in effect.

The paper and its contents he gave the landlord to deposit in the hotel safe; then he ate a hurried, scanty breakfast, and again sought the bench on the beach.

No one was in sight, for it was scarcely breakfast-time at the boarding-houses; so he looked for little Alice's well, and mourned to find that the tide had not even left any sign of its location.

Then he seated himself on the bench again, contemplating his boots, looked up the road, stared out to sea, and then looked up the road again, tried to decipher some of the names carved on the bench, walked backward and forward, looking up the road at each turn he made, and in every way indicated the unpleasant effect of hope deferred.

Finally, however, after two hours of fruitless search, Mr. Putchett's eyes were rewarded by the sight of little Alice approaching the beach with a bathing-party. He at first hurried forward to meet her, but he was restrained by a sentiment found alike in curbstone-brokers and in charming young ladies--a feeling that it is not well to give one's self away without first being sufficiently solicited to do so.

He noticed, with a mingled pleasure and uneasiness, that little Alice did not at first recognize him, so greatly had his toilet altered his general appearance.

Even after he made himself known, he was compelled to submit to further delay, for the party had come to the beach to bathe, and little Alice must bathe, too.

She emerged from a bathing-house in a garb very odd to the eyes of Mr.

Putchett, but one which did not at all change that gentleman's opinion of the wearer. She ran into the water, was thrown down by the surf, she was swallowed by some big waves and dived through others, and all the while the veteran operator watched her with a solicitude, which, despite his anxiety for her safety, gave him a sensation as delightful as it was strange.

The bath ended, Alice rejoined Mr. Putchett and conducted him to the spot where the wonderful shells with pink and yellow spots were found.

The new shell-seeker was disgusted when the child shouted "Come along!"