The sweet face within the locket was as vividly fixed in his memory as if the original were a sister of his, and he never passed through the train without looking around, in the hope of seeing the little girl herself.

The only sister which Tom had ever had died in infancy, and there was something which linked the memory of the two in the tenderest and most sacred manner.

There were true modesty and manhood in the noble fellow, when he overheard a visitor in his employer’s office relate the incident of the rescue, without suspecting that the hero stood before him, and never dropped the slightest intimation that he knew anything about it.

One bright spring morning Tom was passing through the smoking-car, when a young man, very flashily dressed, whistled to him, and asked for a copy of a sporting paper.

Tom had but a single copy left.  This he tossed over into the lap of the applicant in that careless, off-hand style which characterizes the veteran newsboy.

The purchaser passed over a quarter in coin, and as Tom pulled out a handful of silver from his pocket, from which to select the change, the flashy young man said,—­

“Never mind, sonny; I’ll make you a present of that.”

“But you have given me five times the price of the paper,” said Tom, thinking there was an error.

“That’s all right.  When I see a fellow of your style I like to encourage him.”

Tom thanked him and passed on.

The incident would not be worth recording but for the fact that it was repeated the next day, when the same young man bought a Herald, and compelled the lad to accept a bright silver quarter in payment, without allowing him to give any change.

Six times on successive days was this done, and then the liberal purchaser disappeared from the train.

Aside from the repetition of his favors, it was rather curious that on each occasion he should have placed a silver quarter in the palm of Tom.

Each coin was of the same date as that year, and was so bright and shiny that Tom believed they must have come directly from the mint.  They looked so handsome, indeed, that he determined to keep them as pocket-pieces, instead of giving them out in change.

There is nothing like actual experience to sharpen a fellow’s wits; and, on the first day the munificent stranger vanished, a dim suspicion entered the head of Tom that some mischief was brewing.

That night in New York he examined the coins more minutely than heretofore.  Half an hour later he walked down to the wharf and threw them into the river.

The whole six were counterfeit.  It wasn’t safe for any one to carry such property about him.

Tom was strongly convinced, further, that a job was being “put up” on him, and he was mightily relieved when thoroughly rid of them.

That same evening one of his employers sent for him, and told him that he had received reliable information that he, Thomas Gordon, was working off counterfeit money on the road.