" ... we can't have a thief in our employ," was the customary remark. Some imputed to him hideous morals; others charged him with drunkenness, but always with the same result. In the beginning he had thought of leaving town and going West; but the Beekman grit was in him and it declined to capitulate. "I'll fight it out here, alone," he had told himself a thousand times, "here, where I belong--where she is. I'll fight--I'll never run away...." The temptation to escape he had put behind him long ago, but there were other things that assailed him. He had the name of everything that was disreputable, he knew that. Even the newspapers from time to time referred to him as being connected with fracases that never had occurred, or if they had, had happened in his absence. Day after day, night after night he walked the streets with shame clinging to him. To-day he held his position, but never knowing when the merciless hounds of the Wilkinson system would corrupt his employers and turn him out. He grew shabby, shabbier, and all too swiftly, too. But he was glad of one thing: his pride had never left him; he kept himself neat and clean. He felt, though, that these were things that would slip from him as he slumped down into the army of the unknown. Many times he had to combat the temptation to take to drink, to drugs, to the comfortable vices of the vagabond. "I've got the name," he told himself, "the name,"--and unquestionably Leslie believed it--for would not he have believed these things of his dearest friends had the evidence been the same as it was in his own case?--"And that's where Wilkinson was strong--he always had proofs.... Yes. I've got the name, why not the game?" he would reason, as he kept slipping down, down, down. But through it all the same instinct kept him straight. "I'll stick it out alone," he kept saying over and over again. Leslie had told him once that he was a man of destiny, and he still felt it. As long as there was life there was hope. Help must come to him in some form some day, and when he faced her, he must face her clean. Never once did he blame her for his plight. He saw too well and clearly that she, too, was the victim of the Wilkinson system, and all the more so because she was Wilkinson's daughter. In Beekman's mind the truth was slowly forcing itself that Leslie's plight was worse than his, for she was unconsciously the innocent instrument of vengeance. "I've got to stay decent for her sake," he kept repeating to himself. But as time went on, one horrible temptation kept pressing, closing in upon him.