led, stores opened. Children in parkas and fur coats trooped
to school and studied through the short afternoon by the aid of electric
light.

Dusk fell early and with it came a scatter of more snow. Mrs. Selfridge
gave a dinner-dance at the club that night and her guests came in furs
of great variety and much value. The hostess outdid herself to make
the affair the most elaborate of the season. Wally had brought the
favors in from Seattle and also the wines. Nobody in Kusiak of any
social importance was omitted from the list of invited except Gordon
Elliot. Even the grumpy old cashier of Macdonald's bank--an old bachelor
who lived by himself in rooms behind those in which the banking was
done--was persuaded to break his custom and appear in a rusty old dress
suit of the vintage of '95.

The grizzled cashier--his name was Robert Milton--left the clubhouse
early for his rooms. It was snowing, but the wind had died down.
Contrary to his custom, he had taken two or three glasses of wine. His
brain was excited so that he knew he could not sleep. He decided to read
"Don Quixote" by the stove for an hour or two. The heat and the reading
together would make him drowsy.

Arrived at the bank, he let himself into his rooms and locked the
door. He stooped to open the draft of the stove when a sound stopped
him halfway. The cashier stood rigid, still crouched, waiting for a
repetition of the noise. It came once more--the low, dull rasping of
a file.

Shivers ran down the spine of Milton and up the back of his head to
the roots of his hair. Somebody was in the bank--at two o'clock in the
morning--with tools for burglary. He was a scholarly old fellow, brought
up in New England and cast out to the uttermost frontier by the malign
tragedy of poverty. Adventure offered no appeal to him. His soul quaked
as he waited with slack, feeble muscles upon the discovery that only a
locked door stood between him and violent ruffians.

But though his knees trembled beneath him and the sickness of fear was
gripping his heart, Robert Milton had in him the dynamic spark that
makes a man. He tiptoed to his desk and with shaking fingers gripped the
revolver that lay in a drawer.

The cashier stood there for a moment, moistening his dry lips with
his tongue and trying to swallow the lump that rose to his throat and
threatened to stop his breathing. He braced himself for the plunge,
then slowly trod across the room to the inner, locked door. The pa