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92 to tell these things to their mates, so that they might profit by them.

Frank, Ralph and Lanky walked home together at noon.

"Wait for me here a minute, fellows, please," remarked Ralph, as they came to a bookstore where papers from New York were kept on sale.

He dodged inside, leaving Lanky looking at Frank with a puzzled expression on his face.

"I think he's gone to buy a daily paper that makes a specialty of all the latest shipping news. You know Ralph is intensely interested in watching for the arrival of the Empress of Japan at San Francisco. He believes she will be bringing some one for whose coming the poor fellow is anxiously watching—his mother!" said Frank.

"Oh! yes, you were telling me about it," murmured Lanky. "He was brought up by the Wests in the village of Scardale as their son, and only lately learned that he had been adopted, taken from the poorhouse by the couple when a baby. And about a year ago he began to receive some money on the first of every month, with a mysterious note telling him to get an education such as he yearned to receive."

Frank nodded his dead.

"Ralph has taken me into his confidence almost from the beginning," he said. "I went with him