"In a second he was alert and awake; the next instant he found himself at the panel, reaching tremulously for the concealed spring.

"At last he found it; the panel shot back, and the prince, after one searching glance, stood transfixed and uttered a cry of wondering despair.

"'The gleaming hoard still shot its varied lightnings. The royal sapphire still crowned its priceless apex. To his starting eyes his treasure was not a whit diminished, but directly in front, and at the base of the precious heap, lay as many as would make a heaping handful of pebbles."

As the Sepoy reached this startling climax in his recital, the even modulations of his voice ceased abruptly.

Raikes, missing the somnolent monotone, looked up quickly.

The eyes of the Sepoy were fixed upon him with a gleam in his glance not unlike that of the sapphire upon which the miser had been engaged during the whole of this singular narrative.

"That is a weird tale," he said at last. "Why do you pause at such a point? What is the conclusion?"

"That is some distance away yet," replied the Sepoy. "If you care to continue, I will resume the thread at this time to-morrow evening."

"Very well," answered Raikes with some impatience, "I will be here. I must, at least, congratulate you upon your observance of the proprieties in tale-telling; you manage to pause at the proper places."

"You are curious, then, to hear the rest?"

"Naturally," replied Raikes, with the sour candor which distinguished him. "The situation you describe I can appreciate--the loser confronted with his loss--and I am to conjecture his attitude until to-morrow night. Very well, I bid you good evening," and Raikes, with a curt inclination of the head, which made a travesty of his intention to be courteous, vanished through the doorway.

(The continuation of this remarkable story will be found on Dickey Series B, which may be bought from almost any haberdasher.)

As Dennis reached this announcement his head throbbed violently.

He had raced so apace with the movement of the tale that he had not remarked, in his absorption, an unfamiliar congestion about the base of his brain.

Directly, however, he was convinced of its disagreeable presence when this abrupt conclusion, which he had come to expect at the end of each bosom, materialized to his irritated anticipation.

He was no longer inclined to admire the calculating genius of the italicized phrase.

A temperance lecture was aching its way through his head. His conscience seemed to have decided to reside in the pit of his stomach, and a sense of surrender and defeat humiliated him.

His room looked cell-like.

The arrow pointing to the fire-escape seemed full of menace.

His face, reflected from the dingy glass, had never appeared so ugly and reproachful.

He needed something to restore his confidence, but was happily unaware of the nature of the remedy his system demanded.

It was his first offense.

He raised the window for a breath of fresh air, and the roaring street called him.

There was mockery and invitation in its hubbub. Why not? A little exercise would bring him around to his point of moral departure.

So, hastily adjusting the third chapter to his waistcoat and donning the balance of his garments, he fitted his hat to his head with thoughtful caution and hurried to the bustling thoroughfare.

Preoccupied by his gradually lessening disabilities, Dennis did not remark that the course pursued by him had the house of the publisher as its terminus, until he stood directly before that august establishment.

As the young Irishman recognized his surroundings, it did not take him long to persuade himself, with native superstition, as he considered the unaware nature of his arrival, that Providence had directed his footsteps thither, and, with the species of courage that can come from such a basis, he proceeded to the rearway, where he beheld the Celt in whom his hopes were centered, berating the porters, with a mien which offered anything but encouragement to the anxious young man.

However, he came forward tentatively, and found himself, presently, so much within the radius of the foreman's range of vision as to be compelled to accept, with enforced urbanity, the vituperation of the draymen, who objected to the amount of landscape he occupied with his bulk and eager personality.

At last, when the foreman had bullied his lusty understudies into a certain degree of sullen system, and the drays began to move away with their mysterious burdens, Dennis ventured to address him.

Greatly to his relief, the perturbed countenance of the latter softened perceptibly as he exclaimed:

"Ah, ha! an' it's there ye are?"

"Yes," replied Dennis with solicitous abnegation.

"Well," returned the other, "roll up yer sleeves; yer job's a-waitin'

fur ye."

With an agility that betrayed the diplomacy of his countenance into ingenuous exultation, Dennis followed the foreman into the warehouse, and the latter at once began his instructions as to the system of marking, and Dennis mastered its simple mysteries with a quickness that was not only flattering to the discernment of his instructor but an indorsement of Celtic adjustability in general.

In the course of the morning Dennis discovered that his predecessor had put him under obligations by prolonging his debauch, and that his arrival upon the scene had been most opportune in consequence.

He was now assured of a position, whose only handicap was the prospect, delicately insinuated by the foreman for his consideration, of the possible state of mind of the previous incumbent when he realized that his niche had been filled, and it did not add to his cheerfulness when the foreman examined his biceps with an expert touch and remarked: "I guess that ye can take care of yerself."

There was nothing belligerent about Dennis, and he trusted that his predecessor would not regard him from that standpoint.

In the meantime Saturday arrived, and Dennis, in possession of his proportion of the week's pay, hurried to The Stag by way of Baxter Street.

In this locality he began a search for Series B of the dickies, and was finally successful, after a number of disappointments and a protracted hunt.

With the courage of his recently acquired situation, Dennis proposed to indulge in a little improvidence.

He decided that he would follow the singular recital on the dickey backs and rip off a chapter at a time.

After a night of fortifying slumber, Dennis arose, breakfasted, and boarded an elevated train, which presently conveyed him to the vicinity of Central Park.

Here, after securing a seat to his fancy, he withdrew Series B from the wrapper, detached bosom No. 1 and began.

CHAPTER V

When Raikes had parted from the Sepoy, a degree of his customary hardness and assurance was evident in his manner.