difficult to obtain in his present garb.  But of difficulties Sweetwater was not a man to take note.  He had undertaken out of pure love for a good man to lose himself.  He had accomplished this, and now was he to complain because in doing so he was likely to go hungry for a day or two?  No; Amabel might laugh at him, or he might fancy she did, while struggling in the midst of rapidly engulfing waters, but would she laugh at him now?  He did not think she would.  She was of the kind who sometimes go hungry themselves in old age.  Some premonition of this might give her a fellow feeling.

He came to a stand before a little child sitting on an ill-kept doorstep.  Smiling at her kindly, he waited for her first expression to see how he appeared in the eyes of innocence.  Not so bad a man, it seemed, though his naturally plain countenance was not relieved by the seaman’s cap and knitted shirt he wore.  For she laughed as she looked at him, and only ran away because there wasn’t room for him to pass beside her.

Comforted a little, he sauntered on, glancing here and there with that sharp eye of his for a piece of work to be done.  Suddenly he came to a halt.  A market-woman had got into an altercation with an oysterman, and her stall had been upset in the contention, and her vegetables were rolling here and there.  He righted her stall, picked up her vegetables, and in return got two apples and a red herring he would not have given to a dog at home.  Yet it was the sweetest morsel he had ever tasted, and the apples might have been grown in the garden of the Hesperides from the satisfaction and pleasure they gave this hungry man.  Then, refreshed, he dashed into the town.  It should now go hard but he would earn a night’s lodging.

The day was windy and he was going along a narrow street, when something floated down from a window above past his head.  It was a woman’s veil, and as he looked up to see where it came from he met the eyes of its owner looking down from an open casement above him.  She was gesticulating, and seemed to point to someone up the street.  Glad to seize at anything which promised emolument or adventure, he shouted up and asked her what she wanted.

“That man down there!” she cried; “the one in a long black coat going up the street.  Keep after him and stop him; tell him the telegram has come.  Quick, quick, before he gets around the corner!  He will pay you; run!”

Sweetwater, with joy in his heart,—­for five cents was a boon to him in the present condition of his affairs,—­rushed after the man she had pointed out and hastily stopped him.

“Someone,” he added, “a woman in a window back there, bade me run after you and say the telegram has come.  She told me you would pay me,” he added, for he saw the man was turning hastily back, without thinking of the messenger.  “I need the money, and the run was a sharp one.”

With a preoccupied air, the man thrust his hand into his pocket, pulled out a coin, and handed it to him.  Then he walked hurriedly off.  Evidently the news was welcome to him.  But Sweetwater stood rooted to the ground.  The man had given him a five-dollar gold piece instead of the nickel he had evidently intended.