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 "Quick! Mr. Banning's trying to attract your attention. Maybe he's going to tell you something."

But when Praska went forward to the teacher's desk, Mr. Banning asked: "Have you seen Carlos Dix?"

"Yes, sir."

The teacher's eyes asked a question. Slowly Praska shook his head; and the teacher sighed under his breath.

"I'm sorry," was all he said. "I suppose that's your final verdict?"

Praska nodded. The same tenacity, the same doggedness, the same deliberate finality that made him slow to form opinions, made him slow to change them. Carlos Dix was rehabilitated in his estimation. . . and instead of that fact's driving home harder what the lawyer had said, it served only to strengthen the course on which he had decided. Work itself had at first lured him; now it was work with Carlos Dix that beckoned him with glamour and promise. Carlos Dix might advise college; and yet, if he asked it, if if he waved college away, he thought that Carlos Dix would take him into his office. Twice he had heard the man say that he would soon have to get a clerk. The salary, of course, would be very small, but that struck the boy as of slight