"It's too much to lose," he muttered, as he thought of his hardly
earned promotion, his four thousand a year, and--the future
prospects. He was the envy of his limited coterie, even though his
few intimates looked with a certain awe upon a man who was obliged
to file a bond of fifty thousand dollars for his vast pecuniary
handlings.

For the great association of Western cattle men were hard taskmasters
and only the head lawyers in Detroit knew that Hugh Worthington
had annually sent in his own personal check to the Fidelity Company
to pay the dues of the bond of the son of a man to whom he had owed
his own first rise.

"It's too hard," mused his patron, "to spy on the lad and then
make him pay for it. But it has to be," he sighed. "There are the
snares and pitfalls."

Many an eye approvingly followed the stalwart young man still in
the flush of his unsapped vigor, at twenty-eight, as the tall form
swept on through the crowds of polyglot women.

There was a healthy tan on Clayton's face, his brown hair crisply
curled upon a well-set head, his keen blue eye and soldierly mustache
finely setting off a frank and engaging countenance.

The grave sense of gratitude, his place of trust, the stern admonitions
of his sententious patron, Worthington, and the counsel of his
only chum--a hard-headed young New York lawyer--had kept him so
far from the prehensile clutches of the Jezebel-infested Tenderloin.