e covers of his ledger like a pressed moth. He
came out of his shell (to change the simile) toward the close of the
day's work and went into a minute examination of certain deposit slips
that had gone through the day of the shortage, but his interest was
purely clerical, and his sympathy amounted to: "Did you ever see such
rotten writers as these Banfield storekeepers?"

Henty looked up from a sponge, which, he said, he was training to lick
stamps and envelopes, but did not speak. Words would have added
nothing to the humor of his expression.

For two weeks after the affair of the silver, Penton surpassed himself
in signing his name. Also he took a social turn, and began once more
to hypnotize the good people of Banfield. He had a faculty for
ingratiating himself with people who were not great students of human
nature. The town mayor was a particularly easy victim of his.

"Hello, Mr. Muir," Penton would say as the mayor entered the office,
"I'm glad to see you looking so well. How's Mrs. Muir? I understand
you are doing big things on the dam." (Here Henty would emphatically
repeat the word from his desk in the rear of the office.) The mayor
would grin and begin divulging municipal secrets. Penton always made a
point of talking loudly with Muir and laughing yet more vociferously at
his jokes.

There were women in Banfield, too, who were not impervious to Penton's
flattery. He had a way of looking into their eyes and speaking softly
that charmed them.

Nelson knew that Penton could have managed the branch well if he had
gone to work; Penton was, evidently, familiar with the great circus
man's aphorism about humbugging people, and could have given them all
they wanted of it--to the bank's profit. It was, no doubt, owing to
this hypocritical asset and the appreciation of it by head office
officials, that Penton was managing a branch.

There is a certain stock-company actor in the States who periodically
goes on a spree, comes back and weeps to his audience, and is forgiven.
That is virtually what Penton was doing. He had hit upon the scheme as
by inspiration, and it worked well. He asked a young dentist and wife
down to his apartments behind the bank and feted them on the best in
town. Above all, he flattered them, and he made Mrs. Penton help him
do it. She was, in fact, blind to the greater part of his badness, and
was so anxious to help him into the favor of Banfield's best customers
that she was