But Mr. Carden was already in the outer office beside the clerk who had admitted Clarence.

“You remember that boy Brant who was here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where did he go?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“Go and find him somewhere and somehow.  Go to all the hotels, restaurants, and gin-mills near here, and hunt him up.  Take some one with you, if you can’t do it alone.  Bring him back here, quick!”

It was nearly midnight when the clerk fruitlessly returned.  It was the fierce high noon of “steamer nights”; light flashed brilliantly from shops, counting-houses, drinking-saloons, and gambling-hells.  The streets were yet full of eager, hurrying feet—­swift of fortune, ambition, pleasure, or crime.  But from among these deeper harsher footfalls the echo of the homeless boy’s light, innocent tread seemed to have died out forever.

CHAPTER VIII

When Clarence was once more in the busy street before the bank, it seemed clear to his boyish mind that, being now cast adrift upon the world and responsible to no one, there was no reason why he should not at once proceed to the nearest gold mines!  The idea of returning to Mr. Peyton and Susy, as a disowned and abandoned outcast, was not to be thought of.  He would purchase some kind of an outfit, such as he had seen the miners carry, and start off as soon as he had got his supper.  But although one of his most delightful anticipations had been the unfettered freedom of ordering a meal at a restaurant, on entering the first one he found himself the object of so much curiosity, partly from his size and partly from his dress, which the unfortunate boy was beginning to suspect was really preposterous, and he turned away with a stammered excuse, and did not try another.  Further on he found a baker’s shop, where he refreshed himself with some gingerbread and lemon soda.  At an adjacent grocery he purchased some herrings, smoked beef, and biscuits, as future provisions for his “pack” or kit.  Then began his real quest for an outfit.  In an hour he had secured—­ostensibly for some friend, to avoid curious inquiry—­a pan, a blanket, a shovel and pick, all of which he deposited at the baker’s, his unostentatious headquarters, with the exception of a pair of disguising high boots that half hid his sailor trousers, which he kept to put on at the last.  Even to his inexperience the cost of these articles seemed enormous; when his purchases were complete, of his entire capital scarcely four dollars remained!  Yet in the fond illusions of boyhood these rude appointments seemed possessed of far more value than the gold he had given in exchange for them, and he had enjoyed a child’s delight in testing the transforming magic of money.