eager to find some trace of Peter in the counterfeit presentment
of the man he loved best, and whose memory was still almost a
religion, but except that both Peter and his father were bald, and
that both wore high, old-fashioned collars and neck-cloths, he had
been compelled to admit with a sigh that there was nothing about
the portrait on which to base the slightest claim to resemblance.

"Yet he's like my father, he is, he is," he kept repeating to
himself as the cab sped on. "I'll find out what it is when I know
him better. To-night when Mr. Grayson comes I'll study it out,"
and a joyous smile flashed across his features as he thought of
the treat in store for him.

When at last the boy reached his office, where, behind the
mahogany partition with its pigeon-hole cut through the glass
front he sat every day, he swung back the doors of the safe, took
out his books and papers and made ready for work. He had charge of
the check book, and he alone signed the firm's name outside of the
partners. "Rather young," one of them protested, until he looked
into the boy's face, then he gave his consent; something better
than years of experience and discretion are wanted where a scratch
of a pen might mean financial ruin.

Breen had preceded him with but a nod to his clerks, and had
disappeared into his private office--another erection of ground
glass and mahogany. Here the senior member of the firm shut the
door carefully, and turning his back fished up a tiny key attached
to a chain leading to the rear pocket of his trousers. With this
he opened a small closet near his desk--a mere box of a closet--
took from it a squatty-shaped decanter labelled "Rye, 1840,"