gonally opposite,--something almost invariably impelled his glance
upward to the sign of a painless dentist, immediately above the First
National,--a propinquity which had caused a wag (one of the Montgomery's
customers) to express the hope that the dentist was more painless than
the bank in his extractions.

There was a clothing store directly opposite Amzi's bank, and his
wandering eye could not have failed to observe the lettering on the
windows of the office above it, which, in badly scratched gilt,
published the name of Thomas Kirkwood, Attorney at Law, to the
litigiously inclined. Still higher on the third and final story of the
building hung a photographer's sign in a dilapidated condition, and
though a studio skylight spoke further of photography, almost every one
knew that the artist had departed years ago, and that Tom Kirkwood had
never found another tenant for those upper rooms.

At two o'clock on the afternoon of the day following the return of Phil
Kirkwood and her father from their camp on Sugar Creek, as Mr.
Montgomery appeared upon the steps of the bank and gazed with his usual
unconcern up and down Main Street, his spectacles pointed finally (or so
it seemed) to the photographer's studio over the way. Although a slight
mist was falling and umbrellas bobbed inanely in the fashion of
umbrellas, Amzi in his seersucker coat was apparently oblivious of the
weather's inclemency. One of the windows of the abandoned photograph
gallery was open, and suddenly, without the slightest warning, the head
of Miss Phyllis Kirkwood bent over the cornice and she waved her hand
with unmistakable friendliness. It was then that Mr. Montgomery, as
though replying to a signal, detached his left hand from its pocket,
made a gesture as graceful as a man of his figure is capable of, and
then, allaying suspicion by passing the hand across his bald head, he
looked quickly toward the court-house tower and immediately withdrew to
continue his active supervision of the four clerks who sufficed for his
bank's business.

As depositors were now bringing to the receiving teller's window their
day's offerings, Mr. Montgomery took his stand at the paying teller's
window,--a part of his usual routine,--to relieve the pressure incident
to the closing hour, one teller at other times being quite equal to the
demands of both departments. Mr. Montgomery's manner of paying a check
was in itself individual. He laid his cigar on the edge of the c