"No; but I can restore the money that I stole. That is the right word—stole. I hope you and your mother have not suffered?"
"We saw some hard times, but for years we have lived in comfort."
"I am glad of that. Will you bring a lawyer to me to-morrow evening? I want to make restitution. Then I shall die easier."
"You might keep every dollar if you would bring my father back."
"Would that I could! I must do what I can."
The next evening Davis transferred to Dan and his mother property amounting to fifty thousand dollars, in payment of what he had taken, with interest, and in less than a month later he died, Dan taking upon himself the charge of the funeral. His trip to Europe was deferred, and having now capital to contribute, he was taken as junior partner into the firm where he had once filled the position of office-boy.
Tom Carver is down in the world. His father had failed disastrously, and Tom is glad to accept a minor clerkship from the boy at whom he once sneered.
Julia Rogers has never lost her preference for Dan. It is whispered that they are engaged, or likely soon to be, and Dan's assiduous attentions to the young lady make the report a plausible one.
John Hartley was sentenced to a term of years in prison. Harriet Vernon dreaded the day of his release, being well convinced that he would seize the earliest opportunity to renew his persecutions. She had about made up her mind to buy him off, when she received intelligence that he was carried off by fever, barely a month before the end of his term. It was a sad end of a bad life, but she could not regret him. Althea was saved the knowledge of her father's worthlessness. She was led to believe that he had died when she was a little girl.
And now the curtain must fall. Dan, the young detective, has entered upon a career of influence and prosperity. The hardships of his earlier years contributed to strengthen his character, and give him that self-reliance of which the sons of rich men so often stand in need. A similar experience might have benefited Tom Carver, whose lofty anticipations have been succeeded by a very humble reality. Let those boys who are now passing through the discipline of poverty and privation, take courage and emulate the example of "Dan, the Detective."