retch shadowed by their overgrown shrubbery brought us to
the door leading to the upstair offices, without any possible danger
of detection.

The bank had been a stately old home before business seized upon it,
tore out its whole lower floors, and converted it into a strong and
commodious bank. It is the one building in all Appleboro that keeps a
light burning all night, a proceeding some citizens regard as
unnecessary and extravagant; for is not Old Man Jackson there employed
as night watchman? Old Man Jackson lost a finger and a piece of an ear
before Appomattox, and the surrender deprived him of all opportunity
to repay in kind. It was his cherished hope that "some smartybus
crooks 'd try to git in my bank some uh these hyuh nights--an' I
cert'nly hope to God they'll be Yankees, that's all."

Somehow, they hadn't tried. Perhaps they had heard of Old Man
Jackson's watchful waiting and knew he wasn't at all too proud to
fight. His quarters was a small room in the rear of the building,
which he shared with a huge gray tomcat named Mosby. With those two on
guard, Appleboro knew its bank was as impregnable as Gibraltar. But as
nobody could possibly gain entrance to the vaults from above, the
upper portion of the building, given over to offices, was of course
quite unguarded.

One reached these upper offices by a long walled passageway to the
left, where the sidewall of the bank adjoins the McCall garden. The
door leading to this stairway is not flush with the street, but is set
back some feet; this forms a small alcove, which the light flickering
through the bank's barred windows does not quite reach.

John Flint stepped into this small cavern and I after him. As if by
magic the locked door opened, and we moved noiselessly up the narrow
stairs with tin signs tacked on them. At the head of the flight we
paused while the flashlight gave us our bearings. Here a short passage
opens into the wide central hall. Inglesby's offices are to the left,
with the windows opening upon the tangled wilderness of the McCall
place.

Right in front of us half a dozen sets of false teeth, arranged in a
horrid circle around a cigar-box full of extracted molars such as made
one cringe, grinned bitingly out of a glass case before the dentist's
office door. The effect was of a lipless and ghastly laugh.

Before the next door a fatuously smiling pink-and-white bust simpered
out of the Beauty Parlor's display-case, a bust elaborately coiffur