“Understand, Tom, that in giving you this money I don’t feel that I have cancelled the obligation. Should another opportunity occur, I shall do what I can to promote your interests.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Tom.
The consciousness of having done one’s duty faithfully, and having that service appreciated, is certainly pleasant, and Tom went about his duties from this time with even greater alacrity than before, feeling that he had made a friend of his employer.
It was certainly a great change from the character which he had previously sustained as a bully, and an arrogant, imperious boy. The truth was that he had been injured by his prosperity.
When, through circumstances over which he had no control, he had lost his fortune, and been reduced to comparative poverty, he found himself for the first time filling a useful place in the world.
His new position required courtesy and a disposition to oblige, and he was wise enough to see it. So he had improved in a marked manner under the discipline of adversity, and no longer deserved the appellation once given him of “Bully of the Village.”
So far as his situation went, Tom had nothing to complain of. Rather he had reason to congratulate himself on his success. Coming to California, wholly without friends or acquaintances, and with very slender means, he had certainly been fortunate, and had deserved his good fortune. But he did not forget that he came to San Francisco with a special mission, and he had not as yet taken a single step toward fulfilling this mission.
He had promised Mr. Armstrong to look up the clerk who had absconded with so large a sum of money, and precipitated his downfall. All that he had done to redeem this promise was to watch the persons whom he met, and notice their personal peculiarities, in the hope some day of identifying Samuel Lincoln.
But as yet no one had been seen at all corresponding to the merchant’s description.
“What more can I do? What more ought I to do?” thought Tom. “If I only knew, I would do it. But it may be that this is really a wild-goose chase. There seems as little chance of finding this man as of finding a needle in a haymow.”