er laid up against
him was when he paid out ten dollars once for some imported tulip bulbs.

Then all of a sudden it was discovered that a bunch of negotiable
securities had disappeared from the bank vaults. The arrow pointed
straight to Pedders. He denied; but he couldn't explain. He just shut up
like a clam, and let 'em do their worst. He got ten years. Before he was
put away they tried to make him confess, or give 'em some hint as to
what he'd done with the bonds. But there was nothin' doin' in that
line. He just stood pat and took his medicine.

Bein' a quiet prisoner, that gave no trouble and kept his cell tidy, he
scaled it down a couple of years. Nobody looked for him to come back to
Tullington after he got loose. They all had it doped out that he'd
salted away that hundred and fifty thousand somewhere, and would proceed
to dig it up and enjoy it where he wa'n't known.

But Pedders fooled 'em again. Straight back from the bars he come, back
to Tullington and the little white story-and-a-half cottage on a side
street, where Mrs. Pedders and Luella was waitin' for him.

She'd had some hand-to-hand tussle meanwhile, Mrs. Pedders had; but
she'd stuck it out noble. At the start about nine out of ten of her
neighbors and kind friends was dead sure she knew where that bunch of
securities was stowed, and some of 'em didn't make any bones of sayin'
she ought to be in jail along with Pedders. So of course that made it
nice and comfy for her all around. But she opened up a little millinery
shop in her front parlor, and put up jams and jellies, and raised a few
violets under a window sash in the back yard. She didn't quite starve
that first year or so; though nobody knew just how close she shaved it.
And in time even them that had been her closest friends begun to be
sorry for her.

When Pedders showed up again all the old stories was hashed over, and
the whole of Tullington held its breath watchin' for some sign that he's
dug up his hank loot. But it didn't come. Pedders just camped down
silent in his old home and let his whiskers grow. Twice a day he made
reg'lar trips back and forth from the postoffice, lookin' at nobody,
speakin' to nobody. Mrs. Pedders held her usual fall and spring openin's
of freak millinery, while Luella taught in the fourth grade of the
grammar school and gave a few piano lessons on the side. They didn't act
like a fam'ly that had buried treasure.

But what had he done with that hundred and fi