moments before crushed with bitter disappointment and the hopeless
revelation of his abandonment by his relatives, now felt himself lifted
up suddenly into an imaginary height of independence and manhood. He was
leaving the bank, in which he stood a minute before a friendless boy,
not as a successful beggar, for this important man had disclaimed the
idea, but absolutely as a customer! a depositor! a business man like
the grown-up clients who were thronging the outer office, and before the
eyes of the clerk who had pitied him! And he, Clarence, had been spoken
to by this man, whose name he now recognized as the one that was on the
door of the building--a man of whom his fellow-passengers had spoken
with admiring envy--a banker famous in all California! Will it be deemed
incredible that this imaginative and hopeful boy, forgetting all else,
the object of his visit, and even the fact that he considered this
money was not his own, actually put his hat a little on one side as he
strolled out on his way to the streets and prospective fortune?

Two hours later the banker had another visitor. It chanced to be the
farmer-looking man who had been Clarence's fellow-passenger. Evidently a
privileged person, he was at once ushered as "Captain Stevens" into the
presence of the banker. At the end of a familiar business interview the
captain asked carelessly--

"Any letters for me?"

The busy banker pointed with his pen to the letter "S" in a row of
alphabetically labeled pigeon-holes against the wall. The captain,
having selected his correspondence, paused with a letter in his hand.

"Look here, Carden, there are letters here for some chap called 'John
Silsbee.' They were here when I called, ten weeks ago."