"Oh, yes," said the clerk, smiling complacently, "he's where he ought to have been long ago."

"Where's that?" said Joe.

"In prison, sir!"

"In prison?" in a tone of bewilderment.

"Even so," with a bland smile.

"I can't say as 'ow I hunderstand," Joe stammered out.

"Very likely," said the clerk, "so I will inform you that Mr. Lawrence, having his suspicions aroused, placed a five-pound note on his desk, and then set a watch—"

"Well?" said Joe, eager yet fearing to hear the rest.

"Well," continued the clerk, "this young friend of yours, who seems to have been an old hand at the work, was seen coolly to take the money. But when charged with the theft, a few minutes after, he stoutly denied all knowledge of the circumstance; but Mr. Lawrence was determined to stand no nonsense, and had him at once marched off to the lock-up."

For a moment Joe looked at the clerk in silence, then, without a word, walked out of the office. When he told granny, she was at first indignant. "To think that she, a honest woman, 'ad been a-'arbouring a thief all these months!" But Joe soon talked her into a better frame of mind, and it was then that she promised him that if the prodigal ever came back again she would not turn him away.

When Joe read in the paper on Wednesday morning that Benny was acquitted, his delight knew no bounds. He accepted the fact as almost proof positive that Benny was innocent, and went at once to tell granny the news.

He found the old woman crying over Benny's letter, with the eighteenpence lying in her lap. When Joe came in she handed him the letter without a word. Joe blew his nose violently several times during its perusal, then laid it down on the table, and walked to the door to hide his emotion. It was several moments before he could command himself sufficiently to speak, then he blurted out—

"The poor parsecuted bairn mun be found somehow, Betty, an' 'ere's off to sairch. Good mornin', Betty."

And before the old woman could reply he was gone.

During the next three days Joe had but little sleep. He tramped the town in every direction, in the hope that he might glean some tidings of the poor lost lad; but his labour was in vain, and each evening when he returned to his hut it was with a sadly diminished hope of ever finding the boy again.