After leaving college, his position was secured through the
kindly offices of this same friend whose desk was next his own in the
office in which they were employed.
His gaze still rested on the vacant chair but he saw only a pretty
little suburban cottage with flower garden and smooth green lawn and
box-bordered gravel paths. Once upon a time that cottage was his, and
the sweet-faced girl, who trod those paths so daintily, tripping to the
gate to meet him on his return in the evening, was his wife. Upstairs in
the nursery their children slept, two fair little girls with their
mother's pretty eyes and dainty ways. All that had been his, once upon a
time.
He still watched that vacant chair but he saw only the day they
discovered the loss of that money which had disappeared so mysteriously
from the firm's safe. Suspicion rested upon that one true friend of his,
the friend to whom he owed all he was, all he had. There was not
sufficient evidence to prove that he was the thief, but in the minds of
his employers there was no doubt as to his guilt. The supposed
delinquent was dismissed and the cloud of suspicion rested upon him
wherever he went thereafter. Only two people had known the truth, the
man now sitting by the stove in the tenement house kitchen and the
friend who had suffered in silence rather than betray him.
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