Judging that his employer’s suspicions were allayed¹, Benton ventured to take two five-dollar bills from the till before he went out in the evening. Currency was at that time mixed, and bills, as well as gold and silver, were in circulation.

He left the restaurant at the usual time. It so happened that Grant had something to do and did not go out with him. Benton, therefore, went at once to the gambling³-house which he was in the habit of frequenting.

“I’m getting tired of being cooped up in the restaurant day after day,” he said impatiently. “Why can’t I make a strike? If I could scoop⁴ in four hundred dollars to-night I would leave Sacramento and go to the mines. Then I might strike it rich and carry home ten thousand dollars, as Grant’s friend did.”

Grant had told him the story of John Heywood’s 169good fortune, and it had impressed him.

“If a clodhopper like that can make a fortune, why shouldn’t I?” he asked himself.

So his purpose to go to the mines and try his luck was strengthened. If he had begun six months before to save money, he would have had enough to start before this, but Albert Benton was one of those who despised small and steady savings⁵, and are always on the lookout⁶ to “make a strike,” as he termed it.

“That boy won’t spy on me to-night,” he said to himself. “I must be careful. If the old man knew where I spent my evenings he would smell a rat. I wonder how much I’ve taken from the drawer in the last three months. Fully⁷ as much as my wages, I expect. Well, he can stand it. He’s making plenty of money, anyhow.”

It was in this way that he excused his thefts. Yet he felt that he would like to leave the restaurant and put himself in the way of making that fortune for which he yearned⁸.

Though Grant was not in the street to see 170where he went, there was another who quietly noticed his movements and followed his steps. This was John Vincent, the ex-detective. From the first he had suspected Benton and doubted Grant’s

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