will be pleased." Britt's air was one of finality.

"Let me tell you that the mouth I have opened to ask questions will stay
open in regard to hoarding that specie where it ain't drawing interest."

Britt jumped up and shook his fist under Stickney's snub nose. "Don't
you dare to go blabbing around the country! You might as well set off a
bomb under our bank as to circulate news that will attract robbers."

"Bomb? Britt, I'm safe when I'm handled right, but if I'm handled
wrong--" Stickney did not finish his sentence; but his truculent air was
pregnant with suggestion.

"Do you think you can blackmail me or this bank into making an exception
in your case against our present policy? Go ahead and talk, Stickney,
and I'll post the people of this town on your selfish tactics--and
you'll see where you get off!"

Stickney did not argue the matter further. He looked like a man who
was disgusted because he had wasted so much time trying to get around
a Tasper Britt stony "No!" He picked up his papers, stamped out, and
slammed the door.

Britt shook himself, like a spiritualist medium trying to induce the
trance state, and went back to his writing.

After a time a dull, thrumming sound attracted his attention. It was
something like Files's dinner gong, whose summons Mr. Britt was wont to
obey on the instant.

Mr. Britt was certain that it was not the gong; however, he glanced
up at the clock on the wall, then he leaped out of his chair. In his
amazement he rapped out, "Well, I'll be--"

That clock was reliable; it marked the hour of twelve.

Mr. Britt had received convincing evidence that the rhapsody of
composition makes morsels of hours and gulps days in two bites.

But he had completed five stanzas. He concluded that they would do,
though he had planned on five more. Glancing over his composition, he
decided that it might be better to leave the matter a bit vague, just
as the poem left it at the end of the fifth stanza. In the corridor that
morning Vona had shown that too much precipitateness alarmed her; he
might go too far in five more stanzas. The five he had completed would
give her a hint--something to think of. He pondered on that point while
he stuck the paper into an envelope and sealed it.

Mr. Britt hurried the rest of his movements; Files's kitchen
conveniences were archaic, and the guest who was not on time got cold
viands.

The lover who had begun to stir Miss Harnden's thoughts into rather
unple