would never stop in Waltham without calling, and strode away.

The lightning flashed from a good many eyes in the telegraph-office when
the morning members of the associated press inquired why they had not
been served with the latest news,--why, in fact, the only item of any
significance was reserved for the evening papers of the day. Not a press
of all the indignant complainants was ready to admit that it had locked
up its forms and gone to bed before the wires had completed their task.
Very bitter paragraphs testified, the next day, that, in the opinion of
many sage and respectable editors, the wires had been tampered with
by speculators. The poor little half-frozen telegraph-boy was closely
catechized, first by the officers of the telegraph-company, and
afterwards by certain shrewd detectives, but no clue could be got to the
fine gentleman who so generously relieved him of his responsibility, and
no result followed, except his dismissal and the employment of another
lad of more ability and probably less innocence. Captain Grant was the
man most likely to have come to a discovery in the matter, and most
heartily did he curse his luck--his "usual luck"--of giving away a
fortune by selling a cargo a day too soon. But being kept at home
by uncomfortable toes, no suspicious mortal, such as abound in the
lounging-rooms of insurance-offices and other resorts of business-men in
town, happened ingeniously to put his suspicions on a scent, and he did
not come within a league of the thought that Chip Dartmouth could have
had anything to do with the strange and blamable conduct of the wires.
As he made no proclamation of his loss, and no other case of sale
during the abeyance of the news came to the knowledge of the parties
interested, the matter, greatly to Chip's comfort, fell into entire
oblivion before a fortnight had passed. The understanding was, that,
though great mischief might have been done, none had been,--and
that somebody had simply made waste-paper of the little yellow