Al handed him a pencil. The man was about to write the address on the back of an envelope, when, to his amazement, his companion made a rush for a cab that stood at the curbstone, gave the driver a few hasty directions in a low tone, and then leaped into the vehicle, which immediately started off at a rapid pace. Before the brakeman could recover from his astonishment, the cab had turned a corner and disappeared. "Well," gasped the man, "if I haven't been buncoed myself, and by a kid at that. I'll bet he and the other fellow were pals. And I never suspected it! Well, I'll get my ten dollars back if it costs me a hundred to do it. This is the last time I'll ever lend money to a stranger. I wish I could hire some one to kick me round the block." The brakeman could scarcely be blamed for forming this opinion of Al, erroneous though it was. Appearances were certainly against the boy, and the reader is, perhaps, wondering if he had suddenly become insane or developed into a kleptomaniac. The reason for our hero's strange action was this: Just as he handed the brakeman the pencil a carriage was passing the depot, from the window of which peered the face of the very man for whom Al was seeking--Jack Farley. There was no time for explanations; the carriage was going at a rapid rate. Al rushed out to the cab that stood at the entrance and said to the driver: "Do you see that carriage yonder?--the one that is just about to turn the corner? Follow it wherever it goes and I'll pay you well." "Enough said!" the man responded. As we have seen, the boy entered the cab, and was driven away. "That brakeman will think that I am a thief, too, I'm afraid," Al mused. "Well, I can't help it; it will be all right to-morrow. But he is a good fellow, and I don't like the idea of being misunderstood in that way by him even for a few hours. There's no help for it, though; I couldn't afford to let Farley get away from me!" The two vehicles kept at an even distance from each other until Tenth Street was reached. At the corner of that thoroughfare and Fifth Avenue the carriage in advance came to a sudden halt. Al's driver stopped almost at the same moment. "What shall I do now, sir?" he called out to his passenger. "Go right ahead," the boy directed. "When you get to the spot, stop, if the other coach has not started again in the meantime; if it has, go on as long as it does." In less than a minute later Al's carriage once more come to a standstill. At the same moment a man leaped from the other carriage, advanced to the cab and threw open the door. "What do you mean," he demanded, "by following my carriage? I have been onto you ever since you started. Who are you, and what do you want?" The man was not Jack Farley; he did not resemble him in any way. He was an elderly man, fashionably dressed, and had the appearance of one who was on his way home after a ball, or some other social function, with just enough wine on board to make him quarrelsome.