Four years at college, two with "the chief," under his own watchful eye, and then that six years of a dragging upward pull in the New York office had made a man of him; but, only a self-contained and prematurely jaded man. "It's too much to lose," he muttered, as he thought of his hardly earned promotion, his four thousand a year, and--the future prospects. He was the envy of his limited coterie, even though his few intimates looked with a certain awe upon a man who was obliged to file a bond of fifty thousand dollars for his vast pecuniary handlings. For the great association of Western cattle men were hard taskmasters and only the head lawyers in Detroit knew that Hugh Worthington had annually sent in his own personal check to the Fidelity Company to pay the dues of the bond of the son of a man to whom he had owed his own first rise. "It's too hard," mused his patron, "to spy on the lad and then make him pay for it. But it has to be," he sighed. "There are the snares and pitfalls." Many an eye approvingly followed the stalwart young man still in the flush of his unsapped vigor, at twenty-eight, as the tall form swept on through the crowds of polyglot women. There was a healthy tan on Clayton's face, his brown hair crisply curled upon a well-set head, his keen blue eye and soldierly mustache finely setting off a frank and engaging countenance. The grave sense of gratitude, his place of trust, the stern admonitions of his sententious patron, Worthington, and the counsel of his only chum--a hard-headed young New York lawyer--had kept him so far from the prehensile clutches of the Jezebel-infested Tenderloin. Clayton had fallen judiciously into the haven of a well-chosen apartment, sharing his intimacy only with Arthur Ferris, the brisk-eyed advocate whose curt office missive always enforced the lagging collections of the New York branch. Simultaneously with his last promotion, however, there came to Clayton the knowledge that he was continuously and systematically watched by the unseen agents of the Fidelity Company. And, yet strong in his own determination, he bore as a galling chain, growing heavier with the months, the knowledge that the eye of the secret agent would surely follow him, in all the "pleasures" incident to his time of life and rising financial station. The sword hung over his defenceless head!--too busy for the gad-fly life of the clubs--a strong, lonely swimmer in the tide of New York life, he was as yet a comparative stranger to Folly and her motley crew of merry wantons in gay Gotham. The theater, some good music, his athletics, and the hastily snatched pleasures of vacation, together with the limp reading of an overwearied man, afforded him such desultory pleasures as fell in his path. On his way now to a luncheon engagement with his comrade Ferris, at Taylor's, his mind was busied only with the care of the daily treasure trust.