Bruce had winced under the boy’s sharp look because he felt that he suspected him of some ulterior motive, and he knew that he had an ulterior motive, which was to place Skinny under still further obligations to him in order that he might be depended upon to aid him in his search for the man who had once known his father. Never since the morning when the newsboy recognized Laura Van Kuren had Bruce referred in any way to the mysterious scarred and bearded stranger by whom the boy had been employed. He did not wish to exhibit any interest in him. The time would come for that, he said to himself, when he had left the hospital, and it was with this object in view that he had devoted a great deal of his time during his convalescence to cultivating an intimacy with Skinny and deepening in the heart of that young vagabond the feelings of gratitude and regard which he already felt for the gallant young fire laddie who had carried him from the burning building. It was Saturday morning when the boys said good-bye to Miss Ingraham and their fellow patients in the casualty ward, and went out once more into the open street. Together they trudged along Fifteenth Street to Broadway where Bruce took a car for the quarters, not feeling strong enough to walk any further, and Skinny kept on toward Third Avenue, intending to go down to the Newsboys’ Home. Just before they parted, Skinny surprised his friend by saying in a careless way, “Boss, you reck’lect that party I was speakin’ of as sent me on de errands? Well, I kin fin’ him any time yer want him. Dat’s all.” Then he nodded his head and slouched across the street, a grotesque, ragged figure, while Bruce climbed into the horse-car and wondered how on earth the boy could ever have discovered that he felt any interest whatever in the man of whom they had spoken but once. But Bruce did not know how contact with the rough side of city life sharpens the senses of the young, nor did he know that, during those long days in the hospital ward, he had been very closely watched and studied by the little vagabond beside him. CHAPTER XXIII.