With trembling hands, which indicated the latent fear which unnerved him, and eyes aching with anxiety, the wretched man examined bag after bag of his precious coin with the solicitude one sees manifested by parents whose children are rendered doubly dear by the taking away of one of their number.

"Ah!" With a sigh, the relief of which almost concluded in physical collapse, Raikes was able to assure himself that his rapid inventory revealed no further loss.

Replacing his treasure with the indisposition he usually manifested to leave the vicinity of his hoard, the miser closed the various compartments with more than his accustomed certitude and began to prepare to respond to the lassitude of sleep which, for some unaccountable reason, was unusually insistent.

With the easy partition of attire already noted, Raikes presently found himself ready to tuck himself away for the night, which he did after rolling his bedstead directly in front of the false radiator.

This unusual measure of precaution consummated, Raikes, with the first sense of security he had felt for the last twenty-four hours, presently succumbed to a sleep remarkable for its quick approach and its subsequent soundness.

Until early dawn, with the relaxation which is commonly the reward of innocence, Raikes slept away in unconscious travesty.

And when at last he opened his eyes he was as alertly awake as he had been profoundly asleep.

With a promptness due to his retiring forebodings, his habitual unrest and suspicion returned to him.

He was as vitally alive to the disturbing conditions of the day before as if they had been the subjects of an all-night meditation.

But the confidence of his bolts and bars, the recollection of his unusual measures of safety, reassured him somewhat.

It was, therefore, with a degree of composure he approached the door and satisfied himself that the bar and the locks had been undisturbed.

With equal assurance he rolled the bedstead from the radiator and pressed the button which operated the concealed spring, with a deliberation in which no suggestion of uneasiness appeared.

A quick revolution or so and the inner recess was revealed.

To his rapid accounting the quantity of bags was the same, and their relative positions, which he had so carefully arranged the night before, were undisturbed--but this one, that within easiest reach! What was it caused those sharp suggestions in its accustomed rotundity--those angular points?

In a quiver the man was transformed.

With a cry such as must have been forced from the Jew of old, compelled by the rough levies of his time to part at once with his teeth and his treasure, Raikes grasped the bag, which came away in his clutch with the agonizing lightness that had preceded his first loss.

Quickly he unfastened the mouth of the fateful packet and inverted it over the table.

The next instant there rattled to view a soulless, sodden shower of lack-luster, heart-breaking coals.

(To be continued on Dickey No. 2, Series B.)

"Ah, ha!" exclaimed Dennis, "an' it's there ye are again," as the familiar phrase at the bottom of bosom No. 1 met his glance.

But it did not exasperate him on this occasion, for the young man, true to his determination to be liberal with himself, had still bosoms No. 2 and No. 3 at his disposal.

As he was about to separate No. 2 from its duplicate, his eyes, glancing aimlessly about for the moment, caught sight of a trim female figure sitting not far away on a bench diagonally opposite.

Hovering near her, a man, of a species Dennis had not seen before on the street corners of New York, seemed determined to intrude upon her attention.

Convinced of his purpose, the lady, for such she unmistakably appeared, rose from the seat as the fellow was about to raise his hat as a preliminary to further overtures, and sought another bench directly opposite the one from which Dennis had been a witness to her apparent persecution.

The intruder, however, refusing evidently to believe that the action of the lady had a personal application, deliberately walked past this new resting place and surveyed its occupant with insolent estimation.

A short distance away his pace slackened; he was about to return.

With genuine Irish impulse, Dennis, rising hurriedly, proceeded to the bench occupied by the disturbed lady, and, with a bow that was not deficient in grace and evident good intention, said:

"Excuse me, but say the wurrd, madam, and I'll see that you are troubled no more with that loafer."

For an instant, with an expression of countenance that suggested a fear that the flight from one intrusion was but the introduction to another, the lady looked upon Dennis with an astonishment that was partly the result of his picturesque contrasts of voice and visage.

Then, with fine intuition realizing, in the ingenuous face of the young Irishman, the unmistakable evidence of kindly impulse, she said, with a modulation in which Dennis was able to detect the accent of good breeding:

"I thank you, sir; I am tired; that man annoys me; but I would rather move on than be the cause of a disturbance."

"If you will permit me," responded Dennis promptly, "I will sit beside you long enough to indicate that you have met a friend; then I think that he will move off."

The lady looked at Dennis with an uncertain smile, in which there was just enough restraint to urge the young man to add hastily: "An' when he is gone for good, I will go too."

"Oh, I was not thinking of that, I assure you!" the lady hastened to say. "That would be rather ungrateful on my part. I accept your suggestion. May I ask you to be seated?" and Dennis promptly complied.

As he had predicted, the fellow, who had witnessed the conversation, was compelled to accept its ostensible suggestion, and departed finally with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders and a Tammany tilt of his hat over his eyebrows.

In yielding to his gallant impulse, Dennis was unaware of the fact that he held, with not exactly picturesque abandon, bosom No. 1 in his right hand and the other two in his left, which gave him the appearance of having disposed, in some violent way, of the remainder of several shirts.

Awakened by the puzzled amusement depicted in the curious gaze with which the lady surveyed the various bosoms which he held, and encouraged by the impromptu nature of the entire episode, Dennis, as he realized the spectacle which he presented, indulged himself in a frank laugh, in which his companion seemed inclined to join.

The next moment he apologized, and, yielding to the obligation enforced by the situation, explained his possession of the dickey bosoms and the curious story which had gone before.

As he proceeded with the candor of genuine enthusiasm, and related the incredible narrative in his rich, Irish brogue, which affected his hearer, as it did every one else, with such singular sentiments in contrast with his remarkable countenance, all traces of punctilious restraint and artificial reticence vanished, and with the mien of one who proposes to extract all the entertainment possible from an undreamed-of experience, the lady urged Dennis to continue.

"I can't do that unless I read the balance from the dickey," said Dennis. "Would you mind?"

"I should like it very much," replied the lady with gratifying readiness.

"Well, then," said Dennis, "here goes," and with his musical voice, which was one of his most inviting characteristics, the young man, on the basis of all that had preceded the bosom from which he was about to read, and which he had narrated to his auditor with refreshing _verve_ and an ingenuousness whose vitalizing effect upon her sensibilities he was far from suspecting, began.

CHAPTER VI

Whoever has witnessed Kean's superb delineation of the ruthless Richard in the scene where, in the illusion of his dying agony, swordless, he continues to lunge and feint, may comprehend the frightful mental overturn which prompted Raikes to sink inertly into a chair near the table, and with foam-flecked lips fall to counting, one by one, the miserable coals in the dull heap before him.

A silly smile overspread his sharp features like an apologetic sunbeam intruding upon a bleak landscape.

A gleam of shrewd transaction shone in his eyes.

The clutch of unwonted acquisition contracted his hands.