work kept me so busy I had no time to think of myself, and perhaps this is one reason why I did not rebel before I did.
In the whole of the metropolis there was but one person whom I considered a friend. That was Mr. Ira Mason, who had his law offices in the same building with Stillwell, Grinder & Co. I had done a number of errands for this gentleman, and in return he had become interested in me.
To Mr. Mason I confided my story in all its details, and when I had finished he told me that if matters did not mend, or got worse, to let him know, and he would see what could be done for me.
My uncle did not like Mr. Mason, who, on several occasions, had had clients who wished to obtain patents, and whom he had taken elsewhere; the reason given being that Stillwell, Grinder & Co.'s rates were too high, though their peculiar methods of getting patents had much to do with it.
It was the morning of my seventeenth birthday. I had requested my uncle, several days previous, to give me a holiday, which I intended to spend with an old school chum of mine, Harry Banker, at his home in Locustville, a pretty village, fifty miles northwest of the city.
The Banker family and mine had been well acquainted, and I had received numerous invitations
