firm's accounts, he saw two goose-necked vials, one of lemon-colored
liquid, the other of raspberry color. One was of tartaric acid, the
other of chloride of lime. It was an ordinary ink eradicator. Near the
bottles lay a rod of glass with a curious tip, an ink eraser made of
finely spun glass threads which scraped away the surface of the paper
more delicately than any other tool that had been devised. There were
the materials for his, their rehabilitation if they were placed in his
wife's deft artist fingers. Here was all the chemistry and artistry of
forgery at hand.

"Yes," he answered eagerly, "there is a way, Constance. Together we can
do it."

There was no time for tenderness between them now. It was cold, hard
fact and they understood each other too well to stop for endearments.

Far into the night they sat up and discussed the way in which they
would go about the crime. They practised with erasers and with brush
and water color on the protective coloring tint on some canceled checks
of his own. Carlton must get a check of a firm in town, a check that
bore a genuine signature. In it they would make such trifling changes
in the body as would attract no attention in passing, yet would yield a
substantial sum toward wiping out Carlton's unfortunate deficit.

Late as he had worked the night before, nervous and shaky as he felt
after the sleepless hours of planning their new life, Carlton was the
first at the office in the morning. His hand trembled as he ran through
the huge batch of mail already left at the first delivery. He paused as
he came to one letter with the name "W. J. REYNOLDS CO." on it.

Here was a check in payment of a small bill, he knew. It was from a
firm which habitually kept hundreds of thousands on deposit at the
Gorham Bank. It fitted the case admirably. He slit open the letter.
There, neatly folded, was the check:

No. 15711. Dec. 27, 191--.

THE GORHAM NATIONAL BANK

Pay to the order of....... Green & Co.......
Twenty-five 00/100 ..................Dollars
$25.00/100

W. J. REYNOLDS Co.,
per CHAS. M. BROWN, Treas.

It flashed over him in a moment what to do. Twenty-five thousand would
just about cover his shortage. The Reynolds firm was a big one, doing
big transactions. He slipped the check into his pocket. The check might
have been stolen in the mail. Why not?

The journey uptown was most excruciatingly long, in spite of the fact
that he had met no one he knew e