-nobody knew just how or why--shortly after
your--er--shortly after the trouble at the bank three years and a half
ago. Agatha's out West somewhere now--in a sanitorium, I believe. Her
health has been rather poor for the last year or so."

This was news indeed. As I had known her as girl and woman, Agatha
Geddis had always been the picture of health. I put up a fervent
little prayer that her particular sanitorium might not prove to be in
the vicinity of Denver. If it should be it meant another move for me.

"I didn't see the finish of the bank trouble before they buried me, did
I, Barton?" I queried.

"You bet your life you didn't! There was the dickens to pay all
around. Under the State law, as you probably know, the depositors'
losses had to be made up, to the extent of twice the amount of the
stockholdings, by the stockholders in the bank. When they came to
count noses they found that Geddis and Withers hadn't done a thing but
to quietly unload their bank stock here and there and everywhere, until
they held only enough to give them their votes. There was a yell to
raise the roof, but the stockholders of record had to come across. It
teetotally smashed a round dozen of the best farmers in the county; and
I heard, on the quiet, that it caught a good many outsiders who had
been buying Farmers' stock at a bargain, among them this young Mr.
Copper-Money who was going to marry Agatha--and didn't. Geddis and
Withers played it mighty fine--and mighty low-down."

All this was a revelation to me. In my time Geddis and Withers
together had held a majority of the stock in the close little
corporation known as the Farmers' Bank. The despicable trick by means
of which Geddis, or both of them, had shifted the defalcation loss to
other shoulders proved two things conclusively: that the scheme had
been well planned for in advance, and that the two old men had worked
in collusion. I remembered my suspicion--the one I couldn't
prove--that Withers had been as deep in the mud as Geddis was in the
mire.

"What became of the mining stock?" I inquired.

"Geddis put it into the assets, 'to help out against the loss,' as he
said. Nobody wanted it, of course; and then, to be right large-hearted
and generous, Geddis bought it in, personally--at ten cents on the
dollar."

"And you say Geddis is still running the bank?"

"Oh, yes; he and Withers run it and own it. As you'd imagine, Farmers'
Bank stock was mighty nearly a