of
wheezing that threatened to cut short his existence. Along with the
smoke of the stramonium she was wont to administer a soothing smudge of
good advice, beseeching him not to worry about things, though she knew
perfectly that he would never cease to worry about things so long as his
attenuated breath was not wholly turned off. She urged him to make
Masters do his share of the work, and to take a vacation himself, or to
resign outright, so as to spend his winters in Jacksonville. But every
new paroxysm brought to Farnsworth a fresh access of resentment against
Masters, whom he regarded as the source of all his woes. In his wakeful
nights he planned a march on the very lines that Masters had proposed.
He would get Millard made assistant cashier, and then have himself
advanced to vice-president, with Millard, or some one on whom he could
count more surely, for cashier. He proposed nothing less than to force
the president out of all active control, and, if possible, to compel him
to resign. No qualms of magnanimity disturbed this deoxygenated man. It
was high time for Masters to resign, if for no other reason than that
Farnsworth might occupy the private office. This inner office was a
badge of Masters's superiority not to be endured.

There was one director, Meadows, whom Farnsworth lighted on as a
convenient agent in his intrigue. Meadows had belonged to the old
opposition which had resisted both the president and cashier. He was
suspected of a desire to make a place for his brother, who had been
cashier of a bank that had failed, and who had broken in nerve force
when the bank broke. Farnsworth, who rode about in a coupe to save his
breath for business and contention, drove up in front of Meadows's shop
one morning at half-past nine, and made his way back among chandeliers
of many patterns in incongruous juxtaposition, punctuated with wall
burners and table argands. In the private office at the back he found
Meadows opening his letters. He was a round-jawed man with blue eyes, an
iron-oxide complexion, stiff, short, rusty hair, red-yellow
side-whiskers, an upturned nose, and a shorn chin, habitually thrust
forward. Once seated and his wind recovered, Farnsworth complained at
some length that he found it hard to carry all the responsibility of the
bank without adequate assistance.

"You ought to have an experienced assistant," said Meadows. This was the
first occasion on which any officer of the bank had shown his goo