She trembled with some chill of inner grief, and cried vehemently,
"Oh, Bob--my boy--my boy--say you hate me--for God's love, say you
hate me." She came so close to him that she touched him, then she
crumpled against the side of the seat in a storm of tears, but he
looked at her steadily and shook his head.

"Come on, Molly. It's too cool for you out here," he said, and took
her hand and walked with her to the steps. She was blinded by her
weeping, and he helped here to the veranda, but he stopped on a lower
step where his face was on a level with hers, and dropping her hand,
he said, "Well, good night, Molly--good night--" and as he half
turned from her, he said in the same voice, "Good-by."

He went quickly down the walk--a tall stalwart figure, and he carried
his hat in his hand, and wiped his forehead as he went. At the gate he
looked back and saw her standing where he had left her; he could still
hear the pitiful sobs, but he made no sign to her, and she heard him
walking away under the elms into the night. When his steps had ceased
she ran on tiptoe, holding her breath to silence her sobs, through the
hall, up the stairs of the silent home to her room, and locked the
door. When she could not pray, she lay sobbing and groaning through a
long night.

CHAPTER XIV

The next morning John Barclay gave Robert Hendricks the keys to the
bank. Barclay watched the town until nine o'clock and satisfied
himself that there would be no run on the bank, for during the early
part of the morning young Hendricks was holding a reception in his
office; then Barclay saddled a horse and started for the wheat fields.
After the first hours of the morning had passed, and the townspeople
had gone from the bank, Robert Hendricks began to burrow into the
books. He felt instinctively that he would find there the solution of
the puzzle that perplexed him. For he was sure Molly Culpepper had not
jilted him wantonly. He worked all the long spring afternoon and into
the night, and when he could not sleep he went back to the bank at
midnight, following some clew that rose out of his under-consciousness
and beckoned him to an answer to his question.

The next morning found him at his counter, still worrying his books as
a ferret worries a rat. They were beginning to mean something to him,
and he saw that the bank was a worm-eaten shell. When he discovered
that Brownwell's notes were not made for bona fide loans, but that
they were