e back of the inclosure, where he took a handful of long,
narrow papers from a leather case, and ran over them hastily. Nancy did
not think it possible that he could be reading them; the setting in his
ring made a little streak of light as his fingers flew. She watched him
with tense earnestness; it seemed to her that the beating of her heart
shook the polished counter she leaned against. She hid her
cotton-gloved hands under her cape for fear he would see how they
trembled.

The teller returned the papers to their case, and consulted a stout,
short-visaged man, whose lips and brows drew themselves together in an
effort of recollection.

The two men stood near enough to hear Nancy's voice. She pressed her
weather-beaten face close to the gilded bars.

"I am Mrs. Watson. I came down to see you about it; my husband's been
poorly and couldn't come. We'd like to get a little more time; we've had
bad luck with the barley so far, but we think we can make it another
season."

The men gave her a bland, impersonal attention.

"Yes?" inquired the teller, with tentative sympathy, running his pencil
through his upright hair, and tapping his forefinger with it nervously.
"I believe that's one of Bartlett's personal matters," he said in an
undertone.

The older man nodded, slowly at first, and then with increasing
affirmation.

"You're right," he said, untying the knot in his face, and turning away.

The teller came back to his place.

"Mr. Bartlett, the cashier, has charge of that matter, Mrs. Watson. He
has not been down for two or three days: one of his children is very
sick. I'll make a note of it, however, and draw his attention to it when
he comes in." He wrote a few lines hurriedly on a bit of paper, and
impaled it on an already overcrowded spindle.

"Can you tell me where he lives?" asked Nancy.

The young man hesitated.

"I don't believe I would go to the house; they say it's something
contagious"--

"I'm not afraid," interrupted Nancy grimly.

The teller wrote an address, and slipped it toward her with a nimble
motion, keeping his hand outstretched for the next comer, and smiling at
him over Nancy's dusty shoulder.

The woman turned away, suddenly aware that she had been blocking the
wheels of commerce, and made her way through the knot of men that had
gathered behind her. Outside she could feel the sea in the air, and at
the end of the street she caught a glimpse of a level blue plain with no
purple mo