reased. The ordinary caller displaying such
persistent curiosity would have been dismissed unceremoniously; but
Jethro Hallett was not to be dismissed that way. The captain owned
stock in the bank and, before his illness, his name had been seriously
considered to fill the first vacancy in its list of directors.

"Must have told you SOMETHIN' about how she got hold of all that money,"
persisted the light keeper. "What did she say to you, anyway, Ed?"

"She said--she said--Oh, well, she said she had sold something she owned
and had got the five thousand for it."

"Humph! I want to know! Sold somethin', eh? What was it she sold?"

"She didn't say, Cap'n. All she said was that she had sold it and got
the five thousand. Oh, yes, she did say that it was a bigger price
than she ever expected to get and that there was a time when she never
expected to get a cent."

"Humph! I want to know! Funny she should sell anything without comin'
to me first. She generally comes to ask my advice about such things....
Humph!... She didn't sell the house? No, I'd a-known if she had done
that. And what else.... Humph!..."

He pulled at his beard in silence for a moment. The teller, a brisk
young man, possessed of a profound love of mischief and a corresponding
lack of reverence, entered the office.

"Oh, excuse me," he said. "I thought you was alone, Mr. Thacher." Then,
with a wink at his superior over the light keeper's tousled gray head,
he observed, "Well, Cap'n Jeth, what's this I hear about Marietta Hoag?
They tell me she's left the Spiritualists and gone over to Holiness
chapel. Is it so?"

Jethro came out of his reverie. His deep-set eyes flashed and his big
fist pounded the office table. No, it was not so. It was a lie. Who
said it? Who was responsible for starting such sacrilegious, outrageous
yarns? Marietta Hoag was a woman called and chosen to receive and
give out revelations from on high. The Holiness crowd was a crew of
good-for-nothin', hollerin' hard-shells. By the everlastin'--

He blew out of the office and out of the bank, rumbling and spitting
fire like a volcano. The teller and the cashier watched him go. Then the
former said:

"That's the way to get rid of him, Mr. Thacher. He'll set 'round and
talk you to death if you give him half a chance. When you want him to
go, tell him somebody at the other end of the town has been running
down the Spiritualists. He'll be so anxious to get there and heave 'em
overboard