His wits set to work. He now remembered that David had evaded questions about his past. Perhaps in it there was something that would change his chief's opinion. That night he followed David, warmed by his strengthened hope, from the store, and made inquiries in the little grocery shop in David's tenement. Just a poor man who had been having a hard time--this was all he could learn. He hung around the tenement, and presently David came down and walked away. He followed. After several blocks David stopped before St. Christopher's and gazed across the street at it. The shadowing man wondered. Then it occurred to him that in there they might know something about this man Aldrich. He entered. The next morning David was summoned to the office of the superintendent of his department. He was still aglow from the commendation of yesterday. But the superintendent's face struck him cold. "Are you the David Aldrich who stole five thousand dollars from St. Christopher's Mission?" the superintendent asked quietly. For a minute David could not speak. His foothold--lost! Again the abyss! "I am," he said. But here was a man different from the other employer that had discharged him. Here a plea might be effective. "I am," he repeated. And then he went on desperately: "But whatever I may have done, I'm honest now. As honest as any man. And I'll work hard--nothing will be too hard! I ask only a chance--any sort of a chance. A chance to earn my living!--a chance to remain honest!" "I have not acted hastily," the superintendent returned. "I have called up the Mission and confirmed a report I had from another source. I know your whole story. Your pay is in this envelope. That is all." David went out, dizzily falling ... falling ... falling into depths he felt were hopeless. And as he fell, in the sickened swirl of his mind one sudden thought stood forth, sharp, ironic: It was St. Christopher's that had pushed him from his foothold, that had sent him plunging back into the abyss! Once more began the search for work. But now fewer men were needed; there was time to question. But he tramped on, and on, looking always for a man who would not question, and always rebuffed--his clothes growing shabbier and shabbier, his shoes growing thinner, his little money wasting away--foot-sore, heart-sore, gripped by despair. He had chanced upon at intervals in the Bowery and on Broadway several of his Croton prison-mates. All of them that had tried to be honest had been conquered by the difficulties, and had gone back to their old trades. He now, on his despairing walks, met two of them again, and both urged him to quit his foolish struggle and join with them. Nothing during the three terrible months had revealed to him how his moral instincts had suffered as did the fact that he was now tempted.