"Which way?" queried Matt coolly.

"You rat! Out of my way!"

The auctioneer placed his hand upon the boy's arm, with the intention of hurling him aside. But, strange to say, although he was taller than the youth, he could not budge the latter for several seconds, and by that time the young lady had disappeared, swallowed up in the noonday crowd which surged past the door.

"Now see what you have done!" stormed Caleb Gulligan wrathfully. "You have aided that young woman to escape!"

"That's just what I meant to do," returned Matt, with a coolness that would have been exasperating to even a less sensitive man than the crusty auctioneer.

"I shall hold you responsible for it!"

"I don't care if you do," was Matt's dogged reply. "She's my friend, and I always stick up for my friends."

At this last remark there was a low murmur of approval from those gathered about. Evidently, the boy's unpolished but honest manner had won considerable admiration.

"Do you know that I can have you locked up?"

"What for?"

"For aiding her to escape."

"Didn't she have a right to hurry away if she wanted to go? It's almost one o'clock--I'll have to be off myself soon, if I want to keep my job."

There was a laugh at this, and half a dozen looked at their watches and left.

"If you please," put in the a.s.sistant nervously. "Had we not better go on with the sales? The crowd will be gone before long. We might make more than what was lost here."

"Certainly, go on with the sales," howled Caleb Gulligan. "I will take care of this young rascal, and find out what has become of that young woman."

"And that man," began the a.s.sistant.

"Never mind the man; the young woman shall pay for the damage done, and she can fix it up with the man afterward, if she wishes. I am not going to stand the loss."

"It seems to me you are making an awful row over a fifteen-cent piece of plaster-of-paris," said Matt to Gulligan, as Andrew Dilks turned toward the auctioneer's stand. "Why didn't you ask me to pay for the stuff and done?"

"Plaster-of-paris!" cried the auctioneer wrathfully. "That is real Italian marble----"

"Made in Centre street," interrupted Matt.

"And it is worth every cent of ten dollars----"

"Ten dollars a carload, you mean," went on the boy. "Come, let go of me; I've got to go to work."

"You'll go to the Tombs!"

"No, I won't. I have done nothing wrong, and I want you to let go of me."

Matt began to struggle, much to the delight of the spectators, who refused to listen to what the a.s.sistant auctioneer might have to say from the stand.

"I'll teach you a lesson!" fumed Caleb Gulligan. "How do you like that?"

He swung Matt around and caught him by the throat and the collar. But only for an instant was he able to hold the boy in that fashion. Matt squirmed and twisted like an eel, and suddenly gave the old auctioneer a push which sent him sprawling upon his back. Before Caleb Gulligan could recover, Matt was out of the door and running like a deer up Na.s.sau street.

"Hi! hi! stop him!" roared the old auctioneer. "He must not get away."

"Stop him yourself, then," said one of the bystanders heartlessly. "We have nothing to do with your quarrel with the boy."

"You are in league with him," fumed Caleb Gulligan, as he scrambled to his feet. "But, never mind, I'll catch him!"

He ran out of the auction store and gazed perplexedly up and down into the crowd. It was useless. Matt Lincoln, like his friend, Ida Bartlett, had disappeared.

CHAPTER III.

SOMETHING OF THE PAST.

Matt Lincoln did not stop until he reached Temple Court, as that large office-building on the corner of Na.s.sau and Beekman streets is called.

Then he drew a long breath as he took a stand in one corner of a side corridor.

"There, I've put my foot into it again, I suppose," he said, somewhat dismally. "I reckon old Uncle Dan was right, I'm the rolling stone that's forever getting into a hole and out without settling anywhere.

But I couldn't stand it to see Miss Bartlett threatened. It wasn't a fair thing to do, and that auctioneer ought to be run out of the city.

I suppose he'll be after my scalp now."

Matt Lincoln was sixteen years of age. For the past two years he had been depending entirely upon himself, and during that time he had, indeed, been a rolling stone, although not entirely without an object.

Up to his tenth year Matt had lived with his father and mother in the Harlem district of the great metropolis. He had attended one of the public schools, and, take it all in all, had been a happy boy.

Then came a cloud over the Lincoln home. Mr. Lincoln was interested, as a speculator, in some mines in Montana, and by a peculiar manipulation of the stocks of these mines he lost every dollar of his hard-earned savings. He was an over-sensitive man, and these losses preyed upon his mind until he was affected mentally, and had to be sent to an asylum.

For several months Mrs. Lincoln and Matt paid weekly visits to the asylum to see the father and husband, and they were beginning to rejoice over the thought that Mr. Lincoln would soon be himself once more, when one day Mrs. Lincoln fell down in the middle of Broadway, and a heavily-loaded truck pa.s.sed directly over her chest.

When the poor woman was picked up it was found she was unconscious. An ambulance was at once summoned, and she was conveyed to one of the city hospitals. Here Matt visited her, and listened to her last words of love and advice. She died before sunrise the next day, and three days later was buried.

If his mother's unexpected death was a shock to poor Matt, it was even more of a one to Mr. Lincoln. Again was the father and husband's mind unbalanced; this time far worse than ever before. He escaped from the asylum, made a dramatic appearance at the home during the burial services, and then disappeared, no one knew where.

Matt's only remaining relative at this time was his Uncle Dan, a brother to Mr. Lincoln. He took charge of Matt, and took the boy to his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut. At the same time a diligent search for Mr. Lincoln was begun.

The search for Matt's father was unsuccessful, although continued for several weeks. It was learned that he had boarded a train in Jersey City bound for Philadelphia, but there all trace of his whereabouts was lost.

Matt lived with his Uncle Dan for four years. He went to school in Bridgeport part of the time, and when not learning, could be found at Mr. Lincoln's ship chandlery, a large place, situated down near the docks.

It would seem that the tragic occurrences through which he had pa.s.sed would have made Matt melancholy and low-spirited, but such was not the case. Mrs. Lincoln had naturally been of a light heart, and the boy partook of much of his mother's disposition. He loved a free-and-easy life, loved to roam from place to place. With a captain who was a friend of Uncle Dan, he had made a trip to Bangor and Augusta, and he had likewise put in two weeks at a lumber camp in Maine, and a month during the summer at a hotel among the White Mountains, doing odd jobs for the proprietor.

"A rolling stone and nothing less," Uncle Dan had called him, over and over again, and the t.i.tle seemed to fit Matt exactly.