heart to see him, but his brow clouded over with a troubled expression when he learned that he wanted to borrow five hundred dollars. That amount seemed small, indeed, to the lordly Kendale, but to Lester it meant months of toil and rigid self-denial.

"Come into the café, and while we lunch I will explain to you why I must have it, old fellow," said Kendale, always ready with some plausible story on his glib tongue.

"Haven't time now," declared Armstrong. "I must catch the five-twenty train from the Grand Central Depot; haven't a moment to lose. I will be back on the nine o'clock train. If you will come over to my lodging house then I'll talk with you. I cannot let you have the sum you want. I'll tell you why then, and you will readily understand my position. Ah, this is your corner. We part here. Wish me luck on the trip I am about to take, for I never had more need for your good wishes."

"You are not going off to be married, I hope?" exclaimed Kendale in the greatest of astonishment.

A light-hearted, happy, ringing laugh broke from Armstrong's mustached lips, the color rushed into his face, and his brown eyes twinkled merrily.

"There's the dearest little girl in all the world in the case," he admitted, "but I haven't time to tell you about it now. I'll see you later."

With this remark he plunged forward into the gathering gloom, leaving Clinton Kendale standing motionless gazing after him in the greatest surprise. But the cold was too intense for him to remain there but an instant; then wheeling about, he hastily struck into a side street, muttering between his teeth:

"He must let me have that five hundred dollars, or I am ruined. I must have it from him by fair means or foul, ere the light of another day dawns. I've borrowed a cool two thousand from him in four months. I wonder how much more he has laid by? I must have that five hundred, no matter what I have to resort to to get it, that's all there is about it. I am desperate to-night, and a person in my terrible fix fears neither God nor man."

Meanwhile Lester Armstrong pushed rapidly onward, scarcely heeding the bitter cold and terrible, raging storm, for his heart was in a glow.

He reached the Grand Central Depot just as the gates were closing, but managed to dash through them and swing himself aboard of the train just as it was moving out of the station.

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