"Pratt had something on his mind, and came in here to tell me of it; but he got so d----d huffy, I don't suppose I shall hear it now." "Something on your mind, eh, Pratt?" said Clinton, in a commiserating tone, as he filled Arthur's glass, and shoved the bottle to Quirk; "if so, here's to the end of it." They touched glasses, and drank off the sparkling draught. "Now for the story, whatever it is!" cried Clinton. "It is no story, only a little affair that happened after I left you this afternoon," returned Arthur. "Indeed! after you left me! I am all impatience, my dear fellow, let's hear." In as few words as possible, dwelling as lightly as he could on what Mr. Delancey had said to him, Arthur told it all as it had happened, his companions listening attentively meanwhile. "Why, my dear soul!" cried Clinton, clapping his hand on Arthur's shoulder, as he finished speaking, "your pocket must have been picked. There's always a crowd in the street at that time of day, and somebody has just been cute enough to rob you." "So Mr. Delancey thought, and he said probably you did it," returned Arthur, though in the tone of one who tells what he feels assured is false. "The deuce he did!" exclaimed Clinton, filling the glasses again, and holding up his own to conceal the flush upon his face. "Well, it's too bad anyhow," said Quirk, with returning good nature. "You don't get any credit for honesty, and have to bear the loss besides--outrageous!" "How did the old man know anything about me?" said Clinton, with an indifferent air; "I'll have to call him out, if he touches upon my character in this style." Quirk laughed, and Arthur hastened to explain to Clinton how the remark had been made, and how light a bearing, after all, it had upon himself. Clinton received it with a careless bow, as if, at best, he considered it a matter of no consequence. "And so he actually insinuated that you had it, eh, in the end?" "Yes--and that's the most I care for; if he had believed me honest, I could have borne the rest unmurmuringly; but to be thought a thief!" "It seems hard enough, don't it?" said Clinton, in a tone of sympathetic kindness, well-calculated to win on the trusting heart beside him, and laying one hand familiarly on Arthur's knee. "It's a deuced piece of business, that's all about it!" cried Quirk, growing excited with the wine he had swallowed; "it's an insult I wouldn't take from any man--old or young, or little or big; I'll be dem'd if I would." An insult! that was a light in which he had not exactly placed it before, and Arthur's blood rose at the thought. Clinton remarked it, with a twinkle of gratification in his keen eye, which he strove to conceal from Arthur's observation. "It's enough to drive one desperate! I scarcely know what I should do under such circumstances," said he, suddenly, with his eyes fixed keenly upon Arthur's flushed face.