It was from Clarice, and he understood it perfectly. He was not wanted at the wedding. “But I’ll go,” he said, his desire to see Elithe conquering every other feeling. Mr. Hansford heard with surprise of his intention to leave Samona for an indefinite length of time, but had no suspicion of his destination. The boys were inconsolable, for Mr. Pennington was a great favorite. The miners were sorry, for New York was the right sort, and they prided themselves upon having had something to do with his reformation, which seemed genuine. He had his last shake in their midst, and had been straight as a string ever since, they said, and they were proud of his acquaintance and friendship. They came into town and went with the boys and Mr. Hansford to see him off, and gave three cheers and a tiger for his safe journey and ultimate return. “Keep the pledge,” Stokes said to him at parting. “I will. It’s in my pocket,” was Jack’s reply, and there were tears in his eyes as he heard the shouts of the miners bidding him good-bye and saw them throwing their hats in the air until the train entered a deep cut and the place he would never see again disappeared from view. There was a stop at Denver, where an irresistible impulse took him to the place where at different times he had lost so much and won so little. “I’ll try it once more. Maybe I’ll make enough to pay Clarice,” he thought. He tried again and won nearly as much as he owed her. This he deposited to her credit, and with a feeling that now she would certainly be glad to see him, continued his journey to Chicago, where his evil genius met him in the shape of so-called friends, and he sank again to the level of a beast. Mortified and half tipsy, he made his way to New Bedford, hearing that of himself upon the boat which made him hot with resentment and pain. At the Harbor Hotel in Oak City there was no room for him,—no one who cared. At the hotel, where he spent the night, it was worse. “They said on the boat that I cut no figure, and I don’t,” he thought, as he sat in his small, close room reviewing the situation and wishing himself back with the miners, who were his real friends. “I’ll go back, too,” he decided, but first he must write to Elithe, telling her who he was,—how much he loved her,—and then bid her good-bye forever. He wrote the letter and put it in his pocket, forgetting to direct it. In his satchel were his toilet articles and the present he had bought for Clarice. This he meant to leave for her at the Harbor Hotel, with his card and a “d—— you” under his name. But he couldn’t write it. A thought of Elithe held him back, and he laid his plain card in the box from which he took the vase and looked at it a moment. It was very pretty and he anticipated Clarice’s appreciation of it. In his weak, childish condition after a spree he cried easily, and two great tears rolled down his face and fell upon the vase.