n open question if the earlier
recognition of the possible consequences would have made any
difference. Before we go any farther, let it be clearly understood
that there was no sentiment involved; at least, no sentimental
sentiment. Years before, I, like most of the other town boys of my
age, had taken my turn as Agatha's fetcher and carrier; but that was
only a passing spasm--a gust of the calf-love which stirs up momentary
whirlwinds in youthful hearts. The real reason for the promise-making
lay deeper. Abel Geddis had been crabbedly kind to me, helping me
through my final year in the High School after my father died, and
taking me into his private bank the week after I was graduated. And
Agatha was Abel Geddis's daughter.

Over and above the daughterhood, she was by far the prettiest girl in
Glendale, with a beauty of the luscious type; eyes that could toll a
man over the edge of a bluff and lips that had a trick of quivering
like a hurt baby's when she was begging for something she was afraid
she wasn't going to get. All through the school years she had been one
of my classmates, and a majority of the town boys were foolish about
her, partly because she had a way of twisting them around her fingers;
partly, perhaps, because her father was the rich man of the community
and the president of the Farmers' Bank.

She had sent for me to come up to the big house on the hill the night
before this other night of old John Runnels's call. I went, taking it
as a matter of course that she wished to talk to me about the trouble
at the bank, and saying to myself that I was going to be iron and steel
and adamant; this when I might have known that I should be only putty
in her hands. She met me on the porch, and made me sit with my back to
the window, which was open, while she faced me, sitting in the hammock
where the house lights fell fairly upon her and I could get the full
benefit of the honeying eyes and baby lips as she talked.

She had begun by saying in catchy little murmurings that I knew better
than any one else what it was going to mean to her--to all of them--if
her father's crookedness (she called it his "mistake") in using the
depositors' money for his own speculations should be published abroad;
and I did. She was engaged to young Wheeland, son of the copper
magnate Wheeland, of New York, and the wedding date was set. Black
ruin was staring them all in the face, she said, and I could save them,
if I only