In vain the poor fellow adjured his brains for some homely suggestion, some meager inspiration.

Nothing responded but his destitution, like the echo of a groan; and through such mental straits he arrived, at last, at The Stag.

He decided that he would do nothing radical until the following day.

He could afford a night's rest, at least, and that might revive his numbed faculties.

As he reached the office he glanced at the proprietor.

Could he persuade that cynical-visaged individual to trust him until he received his first week's pay?

Would he be credited if he related his prospects?

As a measure in this assurance, would not the proprietor feel justified in calling upon the widow for indorsement of the statement of the young man?

This would never do.

He could not endure the humiliation of such a revelation.

The poor fellow got little encouragement from the face of the proprietor.

This was suspicious and hard. It had scarcely the perfunctory smile of the professional boniface.

The prospect of having to address that forbidding ensemble was disheartening.

Suddenly his reflections were interrupted.

The proprietor waved a beckoning hand to him.

Dennis hurried to the desk.

"A letter for you," said the proprietor, as he placed in the young man's hand an envelope addressed in a handwriting which he recognized at once.

"'Dennis Muldoon'; yes, that's mine," and hastening to an unoccupied seat in a remote portion of the office, Dennis hastily opened the envelope and withdrew a short letter, and--ye gods! was it possible?--a postal order for twenty-five dollars.

Philadelphia.

DEAR DENNIS:

It's a hard row you have to hoe, I'm a-think-in', and it's a bad spot you have to hoe it in. I know New York of old, and it's a lonesome place for a poor lad.

I send you the week's wages due you, and an extry five to come back with in case your dreams don't come true.

I've got over my mad, my boy, and I'll be glad to see you.

Run over annyhow; it's a dull place without you. The mother misses you bad.

Come Saturday if you can; I've got a business proposition I want to make.

Tell me how you're getting on, annyway.

THE OLD MAN.

"Oh, ho!" cried Dennis. His providence was wide awake now, had made its toilet, and was ready for business.

For a long while Dennis sat with the letter in his hand, gazing, with unseeing eyes, upon its eccentric chirography.

His exultation had not fully materialized.

To grope in the valley of despair one moment and skip along the summit of beatitude the next was a little too much for immediate comprehension.

Somewhat in the manner of the metaphysician, he was inclined to believe, since his misfortune was no longer a reality, that his prosperity might be equally immaterial, and in unaware corroboration he made a minute tear in the edge of the postal order to establish its tangibility.

In the evening, influenced perhaps by his comparative weal, Dennis decided that he would purchase a ticket to the Olympus, and climbing the rear approach to that elevation, found himself seated shortly with the gallery gods, viewing with uncritical contrasts the relative merits of the clown, the harlequin and the columbine.

Between the acts his roving glance found a sudden destination and his elation went into abrupt decline, for seated in one of the boxes, her glass surveying the house in all sorts of disconcerting directions, sat the beautiful widow.

Instinctively Dennis crouched into his seat.

Fortunately he was able by thus collapsing within himself, to escape the radius of her vision, which was interrupted by the railing extending around the balcony.

It would never do to be discovered in his present situation. The elevation was degrading, and Dennis understood the unhappy paradox.

It emphasized the social distinctions too much, and caused the distance from where he sat to the placid beauty below to appear immeasurable.

But this was not the least of his perturbations.

Near the widow a gentleman sat, solicitous, engaging, persistent.

A certain air of distinction rendered doubly obnoxious the assumption of proprietorship which Dennis believed he remarked, and while the young man was able to comfort himself with the discovery that his bewitching companion devoted more attention to the stage and the house than to her escort, still, as Dennis contemplated the faultless attire of the gentleman in the box and contrasted it with his own modest apparel, he felt unaccountably depressed.

All this was revealed by the furtive glances which the young Irishman ventured over the gallery rail.

A strange foreboding overwhelmed him.

The bewildering tinsel of the stage no longer diverted, and he would have been astonished to analyze the reason why.

As the last curtain fell and Dennis was no longer able to adjust his gloomy contemplation to incongruous orchestration, he hastened from the theater, scrambled down the precipitate stairs and hastened to The Stag.

It was midnight before he slept, and scarcely morning when he awoke.

He dressed himself like an automaton, and breakfasted like an anchorite.

He left the hotel without his personal knowledge, and traversed half the length of Broadway without volition. His mind was making the visit in advance of the appointed time, and his torpid body alone observed the social usages.

By noon the patent leathers were a reality; by six-thirty he had assumed a clean shirt and his new necktie.

When the clock struck seven he hastened to the elevated; a half hour later found him parading the street opposite the conservatory, and at eight he arrived with a promptness which, persistently observed, commends a young man to a junior partnership.