"I hope so," said Jack. "Good-evening, sir. Good-evening, gentlemen." Out he walked, and as the door closed behind him the engineer remarked: "He ought to be a railway contractor. Brightest young fellow I've seen in a long time." Jack felt strange. The old, grown-up feeling seemed to have been questioned out of him, by those keen, peremptory, clear-headed business men, and he appeared to himself to be a very small, green, poor, uneducated boy, who hardly knew where he was going next, or what he was going to do when he got there. "I don't know about that either," he said to himself, when he reached the office. "I know I'm going to bed, next, and I believe that I'll go to sleep when I get there!" Weary, very weary, and almost blue, in spite of everything, was Jack Ogden that night, when he crept into bed. "'Tisn't like that old cot in the _Eagle_ office," he thought. "I'm glad it isn't to be paid for out of my nine dollars." Jack was tired all over, and in a few minutes he was sound asleep. He had gone to bed quite early, and he awoke with the first sunshine that came pouring into his room. "It isn't time to get up," he said. "It'll be ever so long before breakfast, but I can't stay here in bed." As he put on his coat something swung against his side, and he said: "There! I'd forgotten that pamphlet. I'll see what's in it." The excitement of getting to the Delavan House, and the dinner and the talk afterward, had driven the pamphlet out of his mind until then, but he opened it eagerly. "Good!" he said, as he turned the leaves. "Maps and pictures, all the way down. Everything about the Hudson. Pictures of all the places worth seeing in New York. Tells all about them. Where to go when you get there. Just what I wanted!" Down he sat, and he came near forgetting his breakfast, so intensely was he absorbed by that guide-book. He shut it up, at last, however, remarking: "I'll have breakfast, and then I'll go out and see Albany. It's all I've got to do till the boat leaves this evening. First city I ever saw." He ate with all the more satisfaction because he knew that he was not eating up any part of his nine dollars, and it did not seem like so much money as it would have seemed in Crofield. He was in no haste, for he had no idea where to go, and did not mean to tell anybody how ignorant he was. He walked out of the Delavan House, and strolled away to the right. Even the poorer buildings were far better than anything in Crofield or Mertonville, and he soon had a bit of a surprise. He reached a corner where a very broad street opened, at the right, and went up a steep hill. It was not a very long street, and it ended at the crest of the hill, where there were some trees, and above them towered what seemed to be a magnificent palace of a building. "I'll go and see that," said Jack. "I'll know what it is when I see the sign,--or I'll ask somebody."