Both the clerks were kept busy that afternoon, Gus at his counter and Sam in unpacking and arranging a new supply of goods that arrived about one o’clock. Gus could not keep his mind on his work, for he was continually thinking about this last piece of bad luck, and wondering how he should go to work to “pump” Sam, in order to find out just how much the latter knew about his contemplated movements. Once during the afternoon, when the store was clear of customers, he had occasion to pass through the warehouse, where Sam was at work, breaking open the boxes in which the new goods were packed. The latter was at work in his shirt-sleeves, and his coat lay wrong side out upon one of the boxes. As Gus passed by it, something caught his eye. He noticed that there were several letters sticking out of the inside pocket of the coat, and that they were all enclosed in brown envelopes, except one. That envelope was white, and there was something about it that looked familiar. Gus drew nearer to it, and was astonished almost beyond measure to see that it bore his own name in Ned Ackerman’s handwriting! The whole mystery was made perfectly plain to Gus at once. The letter in question was the last he had received from his friend in Texas—the one in which the check was sent. On the day it arrived, Gus had kept it by him all the afternoon, devoting every leisure moment to reading it, and, instead of taking it home with him at night, as he meant to have done, and as he thought he _had_ done, he left it on the long shelf behind his counter, and Sam had found it there. He had been mean enough to read it, too; and then, instead of putting it back where he found it, he kept it, intending to use it to extort money from Gus. And right here, we may add something that the reader ought to know, and that Gus never found out. When Sam met Gus going into the bank, his suspicions were aroused, and he stood in front of the window and watched his movements. He thought that Gus was going to deposit the wages he had just received, instead of paying up his debts, as he ought to have done; but when he saw him present the check, mentioned in the letter he had stolen, Sam knew that Gus was making arrangements to leave the city very shortly. He saw that Gus did not receive the money, and that he did not bring the check out with him; so it must have been left in the bank for collection. The rest of the boy’s plans Sam guessed at. He knew that Gus was very discontented; that he thought he would rather follow any business in the world than his own; that he imagined he would be happier anywhere on earth than he was in Foxboro’; that Mr. Robbins would never permit his son to go to Texas on a visit, especially to meet such a fellow as Ned Ackerman, whose influence over his associates was always a bad one. Sam knew all these things, and by putting them together, he arrived at a conclusion which we know to be the correct one.