“I thought I would go back and say something against Mr. Benson, thus breaking off the engagement in a respectable manner. Mrs. Benson has often said that if I ever said anything against Mr. Benson, everything between us would be at an end. I thought this would be a good way to end matters. God knows I have nothing against Mr. Benson, and I know he would have forgiven me if he had heard of it in the place wherever the dead are. But I could not do it. When within a block of the house I could not force myself to go any farther. I could not, as God is my witness. I have tried to do right, but I am such a coward I would have succumbed in the street if I had gone on. “Mrs. Benson refused to allow the expressman to get my things, although I had sent the money to pay a week’s rent in advance with him. She tried to make him give her my address, but I had warned him not to do that, and I gave him a dollar when he returned and told me how he had resisted her. I regret that she would not let him have my things. I can get a new outfit, of course, but I had become accustomed to some of the things I had. Some of them I have had since my seventeenth year. Still, I am content. I have deserved much worse than has been meted out to me. “Later. Mrs. Benson has been here. The expressman deceived me; he gave her my address, after all. I will not write down what she said while irresponsible through her emotions, and I do not remember what I said. At any rate, she is gone. I can hardly write. “Later. The landlady of this house has just been in to tell me I must move out in the morning. She doesn’t desire men like me in her house. She says she knows my kind, and I am worse than the white-slavers the papers tell about. Perhaps she is right. I have no words to express my misery at my conduct. I will rise at five o’clock in the morning and seek a new rooming-house where I am not known.” “Saturday, April 30. “I have another furnished room. It is not highly desirable. I rented it under an assumed name, and I will move when the present danger has had time to decrease. I tremble lest Mrs. Benson should come to seek me in the store. I spend as much of my time in the office as possible, and keep a sharp lookout when I am on the floor. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!’ I know now something of the feeling of the felon who has escaped and whom every man’s hand is raised against. But I have brought it on myself. I only hope it will not result in my final expulsion from the store. McDavitt’s is very careful about the character of their employees. “I put the matter about lady clerks in the department up to the manager this afternoon. To my surprise, he took to it rather kindly, and will refer it up to the proper authorities.