nd dollar sacks, and added them to the pile at his feet, and
still his demand was unsatisfied.

"Well, I'm sorry," said Eells, "but that's all we have. And I consider
this very unfair."

"Unfair!" yelled Wunpost. "W'y, you doggone thief, you've robbed me of
two thousand dollars. But that's all right," he added; "it shows my
dream was true. And now your tin bank _is_ broke!"

He turned to the crowd, which looked on in stunned silence, and tucked
in his money-stuffed shirt.

"So I'm a blow-hard, am I?" he inquired sarcastically, and no one said a
word.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN TRUST

There was cursing and wailing and gnashing of teeth in Blackwater's
saloons that night, and some were for hanging Wunpost; but in the
morning, when they woke up and found Eells and Lapham gone, they
transferred their rage to them. A committee composed of the dummy
directors, who had allowed Eells to do what he would, discovered from
the books that the bank had been looted and that Eells was a fugitive
from justice. He had diverted the bank's funds to his own private uses,
leaving only his unsecured notes; and Lapham, the shrewd fox, had levied
blackmail on his chief by charging huge sums for legal service. And now
they were both gone and the Blackwater depositors had been left without
a cent.

It was galling to their pride to see Wunpost stalking about and
exhibiting his dream-restored wealth; but no one could say that he had
not warned them, and he was loser by two thousand dollars himself. But
even at that they considered it poor taste when he hung a piece of crepe
on the door. As for the God-given dream which he professed to have
received, there were those who questioned its authenticity; but whatever
his hunch was, it had saved him forty-odd thousand dollars, which he had
deposited with Wells Fargo and Company. They had never gone broke yet,
as far as he knew, and they had started as a Pony Express.

But there was one painful feature about his bank-wrecking triumph which
Wunpost had failed to anticipate, and as poor people who had lost their
all came and stood before the bank he hung his head and moved on. It was
all right for Old Whiskers and men of his stripe, whose profession was
predatory itself; but when the hard-rock miners and road-makers came in
the heady wine of triumph lost its bead. There are no palms of victory
without the dust of vain regrets to mar their gleaming leaves, and when
he saw Wilhelmina riding in from