WHAT FINALLY COMES TO THE BOY WHO SUCCEEDED.

"Great Scott! Luke Maslin! What does this mean? You an associate of Tenderloin thugs! Is it possible you have got so low as this?" cried Dick, in indignant amazement.

"Save me!" almost shrieked Silas Maslin's son, in abject terror. "They made me what I am," and he pointed to the reviving rascals, who were no other than the man Mudgett and the Walkhill terror, Tim Bunker. "They won't let me go home! They make me do as they want! Oh, take me away from them!"

"You know this boy?" asked the gentleman who said his name was Armstrong, grabbing Dick by the arm in a state of almost uncontrollable agitation.

"Yes, sir."

"Did he not say his name was Maslin?"

"Yes, sir; that is his name. He is the son of the man with whom I lived almost all my life—Silas Maslin, of Cobham's Corner."

"Silas Maslin!" exclaimed the gentleman, in great excitement. "Did he not once live at Franconia, New Hampshire?"

"That's right. He did," replied Dick.

"And you are the boy who at the age of five was left in his care and never was called for?"

"Why—why, how did you know that?" asked Dick, in astonishment.

"Because I am the man who left you with Mr. Maslin. I am your father, George Armstrong, and you are the son I have searched for for years, but could gain no trace of. My boy—my dear, dear boy, this is a strange, though none the less a providential meeting."

He held out his arms to Dick, and the lad, though of course it could not be expected that he had retained any recollection of his parent, instinctively felt that this man was indeed the father he had long yearned to know, but hardly expected to see in this world.

Needless to say the two embraced right there in the street, to the silent wonder of Jennie Nesbitt and young Maslin, neither of whom quite comprehended the meaning of it all.

At this interesting juncture Mudgett sat up and stared around him like one recovering from an ugly dream, while almost at the same moment, a big policeman came sauntering around the corner, swinging his club negligently to and fro as if such a thing as trouble on his beat was very far from his thoughts.

Luke saw him at once and started to run, but Mr. Armstrong blocked his way.

"Don't let him arrest me!" he begged, appealing to Dick.

"Take this card and call upon me to-morrow, and I will see that you get home to your people," he replied. "Let him go—father."

It was the first time he had addressed Mr. Armstrong by that title, and it sounded strange on his lips.

The gentleman stepped aside, and Luke flew up the street like a frightened deer.

This strange proceeding attracted the officer's attention, and he got active and alert at once.

He approached the group at a quick gait.

"Officer," said Mr. Armstrong, in a commanding tone, "arrest these two rascals. They assaulted me with intent to rob. I am stopping at the Normandie and will appear against them in the morning. Here is my card."

"How about that fellow running up the street?" asked the policeman, sharply.

"Never mind him. You couldn't overtake him now."

"I'll have to ask you to step around with us to the station," said the officer as he jerked the reviving Tim Bunker to his feet with one hand and with the other secured a strong grasp on Mudgett's coat collar.

"Very well," acquiesced Mr. Armstrong, with no little reluctance. "Come to the Hotel Normandie, my son, after you have taken the young lady home."

"I will, father."

"Why, Dick!" exclaimed Jennie, when they were once more alone and headed for the elevated station again. "Please tell me what this means. Is this gentleman really your father? I thought you told us your father was dead."

"So I did, and so I supposed he was," replied the boy, whose feelings were a mixture of joy and bewilderment over this strange and unexpected discovery.

And on the way to her home, in Seventy-second Street, he told her what he had learned about his parentage from the old diary once kept by Silas Maslin, which he had found in the attic of the storekeeper's house at Cobham's Corner.

"It was but a bare outline of one short week in my young life's history," he said in conclusion, "but it gave me the key to the mystery which had till that moment surrounded my parentage—the secret the Maslins never divulged for reasons of their own. But I shall soon know all. Yes," cried the boy, tears of wistful eagerness stealing into his fine eyes, "to-night before I sleep I shall know who my mother was—for something tells me she is not alive—that she died long, long ago, probably about the time my father carried me to Franconia."

Jennie was much affected and treated him with a sympathetic gentleness that warmed his heart toward her more than ever.

"You must bring your father to see us, Dick, very soon. Remember, we are all interested in you and whatever concerns you. You will do this, won't you?" she said, laying her hand on his arm as they stood at the outside entrance of her home.

"Yes," said the boy, with glistening eyes, "I will. He will be glad to know those who have been so kind to me. Do you know," he cried with impetuous suddenness, "I wish you were my sister?"

"Do you?" said Jennie, blushing like a rose and suddenly looking down.

"Yes, I do."

Perhaps he did, but that was because he didn't know any better just then.

He thought differently later on—but that is another story.

However, in the excitement of the moment, and, considering what he had just passed through he might be well excused, he did a very audacious thing.

He actually kissed Jennie Nesbitt then and there.

Then, realizing the enormity of his offence, he blurted out a hasty "Good night!" and flew down the stoop, leaving the lovely little blonde in a state of happy confusion we will not attempt to describe.

An hour later Dick was seated with his father in an elegant room on the third floor of the Hotel Normandie, listening to the story that father had to tell.

As Dick had guessed, his mother was dead.

She had passed away on the eve of a financial panic in Boston which had wrecked his father's business and temporarily clouded his name with a suspicion of unfair commercial methods.

Nearly crazed by the loss of his wife, not to mention his business reverses, Mr. Armstrong in the first days of his misery fled to the recesses of New Hampshire, taking his only boy with him.

"I was shortly summoned back from Franconia by a committee of my creditors, with whom I succeeded in making a partial arrangement contingent on the success of certain mining interests I had in the West," said Mr. Armstrong. "I sent Mr. Maslin one hundred dollars to defray your board for a certain length of time, for I could not return to you immediately as it was urgently necessary I should go at once to Colorado. Afterward I sent him other sums from the West for a like purpose. It was five years before I found myself able to return East. While not rich, I had done very well and my prospects were bright, my business troubles of the past having been entirely wiped out. When I went to Franconia I found the Maslins had moved away a short time before, leaving no clue to their new address, and from that hour to this day I never obtained a clue, even by the assistance of paid detectives, to their new home."

"And yet, father, all the time they were living at Cobham's Corner, on the Erie Canal, and I was living with them, not as a boy whose board had ever been paid, but as a friendless slave of never-ending toil," said Dick, more indignant than ever at the unfair treatment he had experienced at the hands of Silas Maslin and his wife.

"The unfeeling rascal!" exclaimed Mr. Armstrong. "But he and I will have a reckoning that will not tend to his advantage."

Notwithstanding this new phase of Mr. Maslin's duplicity, Dick did not fail to give Luke, his wayward son, the necessary money to take him home, when that repentant young man called to see him next morning at Mr. Nesbitt's offices.

Probably the most excited as well as delighted young fellow in New York next day was Joe Fletcher when his stanch friend and chum told him the news that he had actually found his father—now a millionaire mine-owner.

"I never was so glad at anything in my whole life, Dick, old boy," he cried, with a beaming face. And then he stopped, and his countenance suddenly clouded. "Perhaps a seven-dollar-a-week produce clerk is hardly a fit companion for the son of the wealthy Mr. Armstrong. It will break my heart to lose you, Dick, but at least it will be a satisfaction to know you've reached your proper station."

"Don't you talk nonsense, Joe," said Dick, grasping his hand with a feeling that could not be mistaken. "Chums we've been in adversity, and so shall we remain in the days when prosperity has overtaken one of us at least. Glad as I am to recover my father, I am proud to say that, without any help from him and but little in a business sense from even Mr. Nesbitt, I have succeeded in making my way to the front, even if I am only seventeen years old."

"That's right," agreed Joe, fervently.

And there were others who also coincided with this opinion, the Nesbitts, for instance, and Jennie more than her parents, for a few years later she gave her hand where she had long since given her heart—to Dick Armstrong, the BOY WHO SUCCEEDED.

THE END.