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“Hullo, Bob. Where are you going?”

The boy again looked up suspiciously at this revelation of his name.

“Home,” he said, briefly.

“Oh, over yonder,” said Hamlin, calmly. “I don’t mind walking with you as far as the lane.”

He saw the boy’s eyes glance furtively towards an alley that ran beside the blacksmith’s shop a few rods ahead, and was convinced that he intended to evade him there. Slipping his arm carelessly in the youth’s, he concluded to open fire at once.

“Bob,” he said, with irresistible gravity, “I did not know when I met you this morning that I had the honor of addressing a poet–none other than the famous author of ‘Underbrush.'”

The boy started back, and endeavored to withdraw his arm, but Mr. Hamlin tightened his hold, without, however, changing his careless expression.

“You see,” he continued, “the editor is a friend of mine, and, being afraid this package might not get into the right hands–as you didn’t give your name–he deputized me to come here and see that it was all square. As you’re rather young, for all you’re so gifted, I reckon I’d better go home with you, and take a receipt from your parents. That’s about square, I think?”

The consternation of the boy was so evident and so far beyond Mr. Hamlin’s expectation that he instantly halted him, gazed into his shifting eyes, and gave a long whistle.

“Who said it was for ME? Wot you talkin’ about? Lemme go!” gasped the boy, with the short intermittent breath of mingled fear and passion.

“Bob,” said Mr. Hamlin, in a singularly colorless voice which was very rare with him, and an expression quite unlike his own, “what is your little game?”

The boy looked down in dogged silence.

“Out with it! Who are you playing this on?”

“It’s all among my own folks; it’s nothin’ to YOU,” said the boy, suddenly beginning to struggle violently, as if inspired by this extenuating fact.

“Among your own folks, eh? White Violet and the rest, eh? But SHE’S not in it?”

No reply.

“Hand me over that package. I’ll give it back to you again.”

The boy handed it to Mr. Hamlin. He read the letter, and found the inclosure contained a twenty-dollar gold-piece. A half-supercilious smile passed over his face at this revelation of the inadequate emoluments of literature and the trifling inducements to crime. Indeed, I fear the affair began to take a less serious moral complexion in his eyes.

“Then White Violet–your sister Cynthia, you know,” continued Mr. Hamlin, in easy parenthesis–“wrote for this?” holding the coin contemplatively in his fingers, “and you calculated to nab it yourself?”

The quick searching glance with which Bob received the name of his sister, Mr. Hamlin attributed only to his natural surprise that this stranger should be on such familiar terms with her; but the boy responded immediately and bluntly:–

“No! SHE didn’t write for it. She didn’t want nobody to know who she was. Nobody wrote for it but me. Nobody KNEW FOLKS WAS PAID FOR PO’TRY BUT ME. I found it out from a feller. I wrote for it. I wasn’t goin’ to let that skunk of an editor have it himself!”

“And you thought YOU would take it,” said Hamlin, his voice resuming its old tone. “Well, George–I mean Bob, your conduct was praiseworthy, although your intentions were bad. Still, twenty dollars is rather too much for your trouble. Suppose we say five and call it square?” He handed the astonished boy five dollars. “Now, George Washington,” he continued, taking four other twenty-dollar pieces from his pocket, and adding them to the inclosure, which he carefully refolded, “I’m going to give you another chance to live up to your reputation. You’ll take that package, and hand it to White Violet, and say you found it, just as it is, in the lock-box. I’ll keep the letter, for it would knock you endways if it was seen, and I’ll make it all right with the editor. But, as I’ve got to tell him that I’ve seen White Violet myself, and know she’s got it, I expect YOU to manage in some way to have me see her. I’ll manage the rest of it; and I won’t blow on you, either. You’ll come back to the hotel, and tell me what you’ve done. And now, George,” concluded Mr. Hamlin, succeeding at last in fixing the boy’s evasive eye with a peculiar look, “it may be just as well for you to understand that I know every nook and corner of this place, that I’ve already been through that underbrush you spoke of once this morning, and that I’ve got a mare that can go wherever YOU can, and a d—-d sight quicker!”