d did not answer at once; then he brought out a
sigh and said, hesitatingly:

"We--we couldn't help it, Mary. It--well it was ordered. _All_ things
are."

Mary glanced up and looked at him steadily, but he didn't return the
look. Presently she said:

"I thought congratulations and praises always tasted good. But--it seems
to me, now--Edward?"

"Well?"

"Are you going to stay in the bank?"

"N--no."

"Resign?"

"In the morning--by note."

"It does seem best."

Richards bowed his head in his hands and muttered:

"Before I was not afraid to let oceans of people's money pour through my
hands, but--Mary, I am so tired, so tired--"

"We will go to bed."

At nine in the morning the stranger called for the sack and took it to
the hotel in a cab. At ten Harkness had a talk with him privately. The
stranger asked for and got five cheques on a metropolitan bank--drawn to
"Bearer,"--four for $1,500 each, and one for $34,000. He put one of the
former in his pocket-book, and the remainder, representing $38,500, he
put in an envelope, and with these he added a note which he wrote after
Harkness was gone. At eleven he called at the Richards' house and
knocked. Mrs. Richards peeped through the shutters, then went and
received the envelope, and the stranger disappeared without a word. She
came back flushed and a little unsteady on her legs, and gasped out:

"I am sure I recognised him! Last night it seemed to me that maybe I had
seen him somewhere before."

"He is the man that brought the sack here?"

"I am almost sure of it."

"Then he is the ostensible Stephenson too, and sold every important
citizen in this town with his bogus secret. Now if he has sent cheques
instead of money, we are sold too, after we thought we had escaped. I
was beginning to feel fairly comfortable once more, after my night's
rest, but the look of that envelope makes me sick. It isn't fat enough;
$8,500 in even the largest bank-notes makes more bulk than that."

"Edward, why do you object to cheques?"

"Cheques signed by Stephenson! I am resigned to take the $8,500 if it
could come in bank-notes--for it does seem that it was so ordered,
Mary--but I have never had much courage, and I have not the pluck to try
to market a cheque signed with that disastrous name. It would be a trap.
That man tried to catch me; we escaped somehow or other; and now he is
trying a new way. If it is cheques--"

"Oh, Edward, it is _too_ bad!"