ugged him almost fiercely, and set
him on the doorstep.

"What's the matter with gramma's baby?" called an anxious voice from the
kitchen.

"Oh, nothing, mother; he got a sliver in his finger; I just took it
out."

"He's father's little soldier," said Robert huskily; "he ain't a-goin'
to cry about a little thing like that."

The little soldier sat on the doorstep, striving to get his sobs under
military discipline and contemplating his tiny finger ruefully.

An old woman came through the room with a white cloth in her hand.

"Gramma'll tie it up for him," she said soothingly, sitting down on the
step, and tearing off a bandage wide enough for a broken limb.

The patient heaved a deep sigh of content as the unwieldiness of the
wounded member increased, and held his fat little fingers wide apart to
accommodate the superfluity of rag.

"There, now," said the old woman, rubbing his soft little gingham back
fondly; "gramma'll go and show him the turkeys."

The two disappeared around the corner of the house, and the man and
woman came drearily back to their conference.

"If you go, Nancy," said Robert, essaying a wan smile, "I hope you'll be
careful what you say to 'em; you must remember they don't _think_
they're to blame."

"I won't promise anything at all," asserted Nancy, hitching her angular
shoulders; "more'n likely, I'll tell 'em just what I think. I ain't
afraid of hurtin' their feelin's, for they hain't got any. I think
money's a good deal like your skin; it keeps you from feelin' things
that make you smart dreadfully when you get it knocked off."

Robert smiled feebly, and rubbed his moist, yielding hand across his
wife's misshapen knuckles.

"Well, then, you hadn't ought to be hard on 'em, Nancy; it's no more'n
natural to want to save your skin," he said, closing his eyes wearily.

"Robert Watson?"

The teller of the Merchants' and Fruitgrowers' Bank looked through the
bars of his gilded cage, and repeated the name reflectively. He did not
notice the eager look of the woman who confronted him, but he did wonder
a little that she had failed to brush the thick dust of travel from the
shoulders of her rusty cape.

The teller was a slender, immaculate young man, whose hair arose in an
alert brush from his forehead, which was high and seemed to have been
polished by the same process that had given such a faultless and
aggressive gloss to his linen. He turned on his spry little heel and
stepped to th