“That’s what rum’ll do if it gets a fair hold of a man,” said Barnaby to himself, on the stairs. “He must have been a gentleman once, and look at him now! None of it for me. I don’t like that kind of an ending, if you please.” He stepped into the bar-room office on the first floor, for he had no intention of “sneaking,” but not a soul was there, and in another moment he was in the deserted, gloomy, sordid-looking street. “Plenty of time,” he said to himself. “I’m going to start fair. I must go to my hotel from the ferry, in the regular coach with the passengers from the Philadelphia morning train.” Barnaby Vernon had taken his lesson of life in a hard school, thus far, and he had done an amount of thinking for himself which does not often fall to the share of boys of his age. He knew very well that no questions would be asked of a “regular passenger” who looked well, and who brought his baggage with him. Two hours later, he came out from breakfast at a respectable, but not too expensive hotel, on the other side of the city, as quiet and self-possessed a young fellow as the sharp-eyed clerk had ever seen in his life. “Looks as if he knew his own business, and meant to mind it,” was the sufficient commentary of the latter. If any of the sharpers who lie in wait for the young and unwary set his eyes on Barnaby that morning, he speedily took them off again, for his instincts must have told him plainly, “Not a cent to be made out of that fellow.” Under Barnaby’s external composure, however, there was more than a little of inner fermentation. “All right, so far,” he said to himself. “The old rascal will take it for granted that I’ve left the city. Once his penitent fit is over, he’ll be sure to go for me again. I ain’t half sure but what I’d better go to Europe or California, only a hundred dollars isn’t quite enough for that. What’ll I do?” He was not so unwise as to spend his time around the hotel, however, and he carried his mental puzzle with him on two or three short trips on the Sound steamers and up the Hudson. “I’ve a name of my own,” he said to himself, as he returned to his hotel from the last of these, “and I’ve got rid forever of that horrible old time, but what shall I do with my ‘New Time’? I must settle that before my funds run out. They’d last longer in the country.” No doubt of that, but what was he to do in the country? There had been work enough cut out for him in town, of a kind that he knew how to go about, and very remarkable had been the discussion thereof by the bedside of “Major Montague,” some three or four hours after Barnaby’s escapade. “Might set the police after him, on account of that money,” said a tall, thin, foreign-looking man, in a tone of deep dejection. “The police, Prosper?” exclaimed the major. “I guess not. The less you say to them the better. They understand your kind of French.” “He’d make a better hand than any of us, in time,” groaned Prosper.