day," said Wood;
"because my boat's half verdigris'd, and I want to finish her this
afternoon."

"No testimony to-day," said the captain. "Hi! hi! Kitty!" he called to
the mare, as she began to meander across the road; and he went out to
a tree by the front fence, and sat down on a green bench, beside a
work-basket and a half-finished child's dress, and read the country
paper which he had taken from the office as he came along.

After dinner Wood went out bareheaded, and leaned on the fence by the
captain. His wife stood just inside the door, looking out at them.

The "bank case" was the great sensation of the town, and Wood was one
of the main witnesses, for he had been taking the place of the absent
cashier when the safe was broken open and rifled to the widespread
distress of depositors and stockholders, and the ruin of Hon. Edward
Clark, the president. Wood had locked the safe on the afternoon before
the eventful night, and had carried home the key with him, and he was to
testify to the contents of the safe as he had left it.

"I guess they 're glad they 've got such a witness as John," said his
wife to herself, as she looked at him fondly, "and I guess they think
there won't be much doubt about what he says."

"Well, Captain," said Wood, jocosely, breaking a spear of grass to bits
in his fingers, "I did n't know but you 'd come to arrest me."

The captain calmly smiled as only a man can smile who has been accosted
with the same humorous remark a dozen times a day for twenty years.
He folded his paper carefully, put it in his pocket, took off
his spectacles and put them in their silver case, took a red silk
handkerchief from his hat, wiped his face, and put the handkerchief
back. Then he said shortly,--

"That's what I _have_ come for."

Wood, still leaning on the fence, looked at him, and said nothing.

"That's just what I 've come for," said Captain Nourse. "I 've got to
arrest you; here's the warrant." And he handed it to him.

"What does this mean?" said Wood. "I can't make head or tail of this."

"Well," said the captain, "the long and short is, these high-toned
detectives that they 've hed down from town, seein' as our own force
was n't good enough, allow that the safe was unlocked with a key, in due
form, and then the lock was broke afterward, to look as if it had been
forced open. They 've hed the foreman of the safe-men down, too, and he
says the same thing. Naturally, the argument is, there was