d
accompanied Sherrill to the bank to be introduced and had signed the
necessary cards in order to check against the deposit; but, as yet, he
had drawn nothing.

Alan had required barely half of the hundred dollars which Benjamin
Corvet had sent to Blue Rapids, for his expenses in Chicago; and he had
brought with him from "home" a hundred dollars of his own. He had used
that for his personal expenses since. The amount which Wassaquam now
desired to pay the bills was much more than Alan had on hand; but that
amount was also much less than the eleven hundred dollars which the
servant listed as cash on hand. This, Wassaquam stated, was in
currency and kept by him. Benjamin always had had him keep that much
in the house; Wassaquam would not touch that sum now for the payment of
current expenses.

This sum of money kept inviolate troubled Alan. Constance Sherrill's
statement that, for her family at least, to keep such a sum would have
been unusual, increased this trouble; it did not, however, preclude the
possibility that others than the Sherrills might keep such amounts of
cash on hand. On the first of the month, therefore Alan drew upon his
new bank account to Wassaquam's order; and in the early afternoon
Wassaquam went to the bank to cash his check--one of the very few
occasions when Alan had been left in the house alone; Wassaquam's
habit, it appeared, was to go about on the first of the month and pay
the tradesmen in person.

Some two hours later, and before Wassaquam could have been expected
back, Alan, in the room which had become his, was startled by a sound
of heavy pounding, which came suddenly to him from a floor below.
Shouts--heavy, thick, and unintelligible--mingled with the pounding.
He ran swiftly down the stairs, then on and down the service stairs
into the basement. The door to the house from the areaway was shaking
to irregular, heavy blows, which stopped as Alan reached the lower
hallway; the shouts continued still a moment more. Now that the noise
of pounding did not interfere, Alan could make out what the man was
saying: "Ben Corvet!"--the name was almost unintelligible--"Ben Corvet!
Ben!" Then the shouts stopped too.

Alan sped to the door and turned back the latch. The door bore back
upon him, not from a push, but from a weight without which had fallen
against it. A big, heavy man, with a rough cap and mackinaw coat,
would have fallen upon the floor, if Alan had not caught him. His
w