ounter,
passed the time of day with a slightly asthmatic voice, drew the check
toward him with the tips of his fingers, read it, cocked an eye at the
indorsement, and counted out the money with a bored air. If silver
entered into the transaction, he usually rang the last coin absently on
the glass surface of the counter.

In other times the sign on the window had proclaimed "Montgomery &
Holton, Bankers"; and the deletion of the second name from the
copartnership was due to an incident that must be set down succinctly
before we proceed further. Amzi II had left a family of five children,
of whom Phil Kirkwood's three aunts have already been mentioned. The
only one of the Montgomery girls, as they were locally designated, who
had made a marriage at all in keeping with the family dignity, had been
Lois.

Lois, every one said, was the handsomest, the most interesting of the
Montgomerys, and she had captured at eighteen the heart of Tom Kirkwood,
who had come out of the East to assume the chair of jurisprudence in
Madison College, which, as every one knows, is an institution
inseparably associated with the fame of Montgomery as a community of
enlightenment. Tom Kirkwood was a graduate of Williams College, with a
Berlin Ph.D., and he had, moreover, a modest patrimony which, after his
marriage to Lois Montgomery, he had invested in the block in Main Street
opposite the Montgomery Bank. The year following the marriage he had, in
keeping with an early resolution, resigned his professorship and begun
the practice of law. He seemed to have escaped the embarrassments and
prejudices that attend any practical undertakings by men who have borne
the title of professor, and whether his connection with the Montgomery
family saved him from such disqualification it was nevertheless true
that he entered upon the law brilliantly. Two or three successes in
important cases had launched him upon this second career auspiciously.

Amzi II was still living at the time of the marriage, and as he valued
his own position in the community and wished his family to maintain its
traditions, he had subdivided a large tract of woodland in which his
father's house stood, and bestowed an acre lot upon each of his
daughters. His son had declined a similar offer, having elected early in
life the bachelor state in which we have found him. As Lois had been the
first to marry, her house was planted nearest to the gray old brick in
which she had been reared.