"Come, come, young man, you'd better keep a civil tongue in your head, or I'll jug you as it is. I've enough against you."

"Why don't you do it, then?" was Tom's defiant question; "I've learned enough during the last few minutes to understand my rights, and if you think I don't, now's the time to test it."

The officer went out muttering all sorts of things; and Tom, turning to his employer, his breast heaving with indignation, said,--

"They have been plotting against me ever since I've been on the road. They went with all kinds of stories to you, and now they've been trying to make it appear that I am in the counterfeit business."

"But there must have been something tangible, or that detective would not have come here with the charge."

"There was something;" and thereupon Tom told the story of the six shining quarters.

His employer was angered, for he saw through it all; and from the description of the donor, he recognized a worthless scamp who had been discharged for stealing some time before Tom went on the route. The detective was sent for, and the case laid before him. That night Mr. Dick Horton, who made the charge, was arrested, and in his rooms were found such proofs against him as a counterfeiter that, a few months later, he went to Sing Sing for ten years.

For a time succeeding this incident Tom was left undisturbed in the pursuit of his business, the occurrence becoming pretty generally known and causing much sympathy for him.

It was about a month subsequent that Tom missed his afternoon train down the river, and took another, which left later, not reaching New York till late at night.

It was a fierce drive.
It was a fierce drive.

As there was nothing for him to do, the train being in the hands of another newsboy, he sat down in the smoking-car, which was only moderately filled. Directly in front was a man who, he judged from his dress, was a Texan drover, or some returning Californian He was leaning back in the corner of his seat, with his mouth open and his eyes shut, in a way to suggest that he was asleep.

Seated next him was an individual who looked very much like the Italian who had shoved his head into the door of Tom's room some months before. This foreigner was watching the Californian--if such............