the
people I passed would still go quietly in and out of the opening doors
in the placid spring sunshine.

"There's Bonny Page," said Sally, waving her hand; "she's to marry Ned
Marshall next month, you know, and they are going to Europe. Did you
notice that baby in the carriage--the one with blue bows and the Irish
lace afghan?--it is Bessy Munford's,--the handsomest in town, they say,
after little Benjamin."

The sight of the baby carriage, with its useless blue fripperies,
trundled on the pavement under the budding trees, had aroused in me a
sudden ridiculous anger, as though it represented the sinful
extravagance of an entire nation. That silly carriage with its blue
ribbons and its lace coverlet! And over the whole country factory after
factory was shutting down, and thousands of hungry mothers and children
were sitting on door-steps in this same sunshine. My nerves were bad. It
had been months since I had a good night's sleep, and I knew that in the
condition of my temper a trifle might be magnified out of all due
proportion to its relative significance.

The horses stopped at the bank, and Sally leaned out to bow smilingly to
one of the directors, who was coming along the sidewalk.

"I never saw so many people about here, Ben," she remarked; "it looks
exactly as if it were a theatre. Ah, there's the General now going into
his office. He hobbles so badly, doesn't he? When do you think you'll be
home?"

"I don't know," I returned shortly, "perhaps at midnight--perhaps next
week."

My tone brought a flush to her cheek, and she looked at me with the
faint wonder that I had seen first on the face of Miss Mitty when I went
in to breakfast with her on that autumn morning. It was the look of
race, of the Bland breeding, of the tradition that questioned, not
violently, but gently, "Can this be possible?"

She drove on without replying to me, and as I entered my office, the
faces of Miss Mitty and of Sally were confused into one by my disordered
mind.

The run had already started--a depositor, who had withdrawn ten thousand
dollars after reading of the failure of the Darlington Trust Company,
had been paid off first, and following him the line had come, crawling
like black ants on the pavement. As I entered the doors, it seemed to me
that the face of each man or woman in the throng stood out, separate and
distinct, as though an electric search-light had passed over it; and I
saw one and all, frightened, satisfie