Certainly he was invaluable to the Management as a counterpoise; and they paid him accordingly. Salvation Joe never took tips. That impressed every one, especially the Third Floor. Through this idiosyncrasy Joe indeed acquired a European reputation. On Monday mornings he stood in the great marbled hall, under a tall palm, among bustling porters and stacks of luggage, a majestic presence, refusing with a martyr's smile the coin that corrupts. His real name was Joseph Collett; and in the boot-room in the basement he was known irreverently as J.C. The staff attended the service because it paid; and they had to live. There was only one man who never went; and that man was Ernie. Joe met him in the passage one day, after he had been at the Hotel a month or more, and stopped him. "I suppose you haven't got a soul to save then, Caspar?" he began, his great chest rising and falling beneath the flaming jersey. Ernie grinned sheepishly. "Well, Mr. Collett, as to that, I guess I've got the same as most." "But you're too proud to save it," continued the other in a voice like battalions on the march. He laid a frank and friendly hand on Ernie's shoulder. "Come and confess your Redeemer, my lad!" he called. "Come to the foot of the Cross! Throw the burden of your sins on Him! He'll carry em--next Sunday--two o'clock--second dining-room--sharp." Ernie never went. It was not that he wished to stand or fall by a principle: Ernie had no hankerings for a martyr's crown. It may have been that he inherited from his father a fine reserve in matters spiritual and that somewhere in the deeps of him there was an invincible repugnance to the methods of the seducer, or merely that he was one of the simple of earth--far too honest to see the path of expediency and follow it. The other men saw and winked. They did not admire Ernie for refusing to bow the knee, nor was there anything to admire. "Bloody mug," was all their comment. CHAPTER XXVIII THE THIRD FLOOR But if Ernie was simple, he was not blind. When he was not on the lift, he acted as Boots for the Third Floor; and no man could work there without seeing what he saw. Mr. Pigott, once meeting his old pupil in Church Street, asked him how he liked his job. "Not so bad, sir," Ernie answered without enthusiasm. "Some I likes; and some I dislikes; and most I don't mind." The work indeed, in the slack seasons at all events, was by no means hard, the wages moderate; the tips many, and sometimes extravagant. Ernie was the only man on the staff who frequented the Third Floor. No waiters ever came there. All the waiting that was done--and there was plenty--was done by the maids. Most of these were foreign; and the few who were not had adopted foreign names. They were pretty and pert; and they called Ernie--"Ernie Boots." It was the common gossip that the Manageress chose them herself--"with care," the knowing added with a wink.