“It seems to me the little fellow was rewarded by securing the chain and locket,” remarked Tom with a significant smile.

“That was but a trifle compared to what he ought to have received,” replied Jennie.

“You forget that it contained your picture.”

The compliment was so neatly put that all laughed, and the face of the young lady became rosier than ever.

“Pardon me,” Tom hastened to say; “of course the little fellow has preserved those mementoes, and I should not he surprised if he turns up some day when least expected.”

“I hope so,” was the fervent response of Jennie, in which sentiment her parents joined.

It is not necessary to dwell upon the evening, which was a red letter one in Tom Gordon’s life.  No more delightful hours were ever spent by him; and when, without tarrying too late, he left, he could make no mistake as to the sentiments of the three, and especially the youngest, toward him.  He had made an impression there, and it would be his own fault if it failed to ripen into something serious.

But, as he walked homeward in the silvery moonlight, he felt a respect for himself which, it is safe to say, would have come to few placed as he was.  He had not given the first hint that he was the boy who, at the risk of his own life, had leaped into the wintry waters and rescued little Jennie Warmore from death.

Who would have held back the secret in his situation?  Would you or I?  Doubtful, if when smitten with love for a fair, sweet girl, we had felt that its telling would have riveted the bonds which, at the most, were only partly formed, and might dissolve into nothingness if not thus strengthened.

It was the youth’s fine-grained sense of honor that restrained him.

“She holds a good opinion of me now.  If it should ever happen that that feeling grows into love (and Heaven grant it may!), it must be for me alone, and not for any accident in the past.  Suppose I had not done her a good turn to-day,—­she might have discarded Catherwood for his baseness, but what would have caused her to transfer her regard to me?  No, she shall never know the whole truth until—­until”—­

He dared not finish the thrilling sentence, the blissful hope, the wild dream, that set his nerves dancing.  Unto us all can come that radiant, soulful, all-absorbing emotion but once in our life, and it is too sacred to be trifled with; for once destroyed, once crushed, once dead, and the holy thing vanishes forever.

Two noticeable truths became manifest to Tom Gordon on the morrow.  G. Field Catherwood’s dislike of him was intensified.  The young man had felt from the first that the head clerk was not only more attractive than he in looks, but was far brighter intellectually.  Added now to this was the feeling of jealousy.  He had received from Jennie Warmore a too pointed expression of her contempt for him to have any possible room for misunderstanding it.  When he ventured to hint at their engagement, which had been discussed, but never formally made, she shook her head decisively, and his heart collapsed.