d made up his mind that if Ovid had allowed any of
the bank's funds to cling to him when he went away the shortage would be
discoverable in the cash reserve, undoubtedly in a lump sum, and not by
an examination of the books. It was his judgment that Ovid was not of a
caliber to plan the looting of a bank and skillfully to hide his
progress by a falsification of the books. That required an imagination
that Ovid lacked. No, Scattergood said to himself, if Ovid had looted he
had looted clumsily--and on sudden provocation.... Therefore he chose
the vault for his peculiar task.

It is a comparatively easy task to count the cash reserve in the vault
of so small a bank. Even a matter of thirty-odd thousand dollars can be
checked by one man alone in half an hour, for the small silver is packed
away in rolls, each roll containing a stated sum; the larger silver is
bagged, each bag bearing a label stating the amount of its contents, and
the currency is wrapped in packages containing even sums....
Scattergood went to work. He went over the cash carefully, and totaled
the sums he set down on a bit of paper.... He found the amount to be
inadequate by exactly three thousand dollars.

"Huh!" said Scattergood to himself. "Ovid hain't no hawg."

One might have thought the young man had dropped in Scattergood's
estimation. It would have been as easy to make away with twenty thousand
dollars as with three thousand, and the penalty would not have been
greater.

"Kind of a childish sum," said Scattergood to himself. "'Tain't wuth
bustin' up a life over--not three thousand.... Calc'late Ovid hain't
_bad_--not at a figger of three thousand. Jest a dum fool--him and his
tailor-made clothes...."

In the silence of the vault Scattergood removed his shoes and sat on a
pile of bagged silver. His pudgy toes worked busily while he reflected
upon the sum of three thousand dollars and what the theft of that amount
might indicate. "Looked big to Ovid," he said to himself. Then, "Jest a
dum young eediot...."

He replaced the cash and, carrying his shoes in his hand, left the vault
and closed it behind him. His four fellow committeemen were sweating
over the books, but all looked up anxiously as Scattergood appeared. He
stood looking at them an instant, as if in doubt.

"What d'you find?" asked Atwell.

"She checks," said Scattergood.

The four drew a breath of relief. Scattergood wished that he might have
joined them in the breath, but there