pushing
him hard, and I think that to-morrow his house will be in the hands of
the courts. He declares that he was holding those securities to prop up
his business at the last hour; but Mr. Goodwyn has admitted to me that
they would have been only a drop in the bucket; that the failure was
bound to come. Now you can see what object he would have in taking the
papers after they had been examined by the cashier; and in getting his
envelope hurriedly in the vault without its being looked into again."

"Yes, that is what I thought, though I hardly dared put it into words,
sir. You mean that when I saw him he was buttoning up his coat because
he had hurriedly taken those negotiable securities from the package and
thrust them in his pocket?" gasped Dick, trembling with the excitement.

"It could be easily done. Stop and consider, boy, almost immediately
afterward, as if he feared lest the cashier might want to look at the
contents of his packet again, he suggested that they be placed in the
safe, and it fell to you to do this part of the work. Immediately his
wicked mind must have conceived the idea of casting suspicion on you. In
that way he would kill two birds with one stone, satisfy his feeling of
vindictiveness toward you, and at the same time start suspicion in
another quarter. I have no doubt he had covered his tracks well, and if
one of his securities was offered for sale to a friend of his as he
claims, it was so arranged that it could never be traced as coming from
him. But even the most cunning of rogues usually overdo the thing. His
savage desire to place the blame on you instead of some one else in the
bank looks suspicious, and may be the rock on which he will founder."

"Oh! I can hardly believe such a terrible thing of any man; and yet,
sir, the more I think of that expression I saw on his face, while the
cashier was out of the booth, the more terrible it seems. But what can
you do to prove the truth? You could not accuse him of it openly? He
might have us put in jail for slandering him."

"I rather think we had better go a little slow, and see what turns up.
Graylock is certainly in a hard box just now, and I imagine in a
desperate frame of mind. Any man must be who would descend to play such
a scurvy trick, and see some innocent party suffer for his crime. What
does he care if your mother's heart were broken by the fact of her boy
being accused of this deed? Nothing. He is a cold-blooded old scoundrel,
an