a plan to GET RID OF HIM, and that he had been deliberately lost and led
astray by his relatives as helplessly and completely as a useless cat or
dog!

Perhaps there was something of this in his face, for the clerk, staring
at him, bade him sit down for a moment, and again vanished into the
mysterious interior. Clarence had no conception how long he was absent,
or indeed anything but his own breathless thoughts, for he was conscious
of wondering afterwards why the clerk was leading him through a door in
the counter into an inner room of many desks, and again through a glass
door into a smaller office, where a preternaturally busy-looking man
sat writing at a desk. Without looking up, but pausing only to apply a
blotting-pad to the paper before him, the man said crisply--

"So you've been consigned to some one who don't seem to turn up, and
can't be found, eh? Never mind that," as Clarence laid Peyton's letter
before him. "Can't read it now. Well, I suppose you want to be shipped
back to Stockton?"

"No!" said the boy, recovering his voice with an effort.

"Eh, that's business, though. Know anybody here?"

"Not a living soul; that's why they sent me," said the boy, in sudden
reckless desperation. He was the more furious that he knew the tears
were standing in his eyes.

The idea seemed to strike the man amusingly. "Looks a little like it,
don't it?" he said, smiling grimly at the paper before him. "Got any
money?"