y, who always took
charge of all collections of the church, depositing them in the bank in
the city, in which he was a director. That was all the information he
could give her about it. Yes, Mr. Oatley lived in the country, near the
village, at Oatley Crest. As this was a holiday, probably he would not
take the money to the bank until the following morning.

Hastily thanking him, Mary listened a moment for coming footsteps, then
called up Oatley Crest. To her disappointment a maid answered her. The
family had all gone to take dinner with the James Oatleys, and would not
be home until late at night. No, she did not know where the place
was--some twenty miles away she thought. They had gone in a touring-car.

Baffled in her pursuit, Mary turned away, perplexed and anxious. She had
forgotten to ask the name of the bank. But the glimpse she caught of
her worried face in a mirror in the hall made her pause to smooth the
pucker out of it.

"It is foolish of me to let it spoil my Christmas day like this," she
reasoned with herself. "If I can't keep inflexible any better than this
I don't deserve to have fortune change in my favour."

So armed with the good vicar's philosophy, she went down to the group in
the library. Almost immediately she had her reward.

"Well, what did _you_ think of the offertory, Miss Mary?" asked Stuart,
who had just come in, and was listening to the account that the girls
were giving Eugenia of the morning's music. "Your sister thinks the
soloist had the voice of an angel."

"I'll have to confess that I didn't pay as much attention to that as I
did to the first solos," said Mary honestly. "I was so busy staring at
the fat man who took up the collection in our aisle. He had at least
four chins and was so bald and shiny he fascinated me. His poor head
looked so bare and chilly I really think that must have been what made
me sneeze--just pure sympathy."

"Oh, you mean Oatley," laughed Stuart. "He considers himself the biggest
pillar in St. Boniface, if not its chief corner-stone. Awfully pompous
and important, isn't he? But they couldn't get along without him very
well. He is a joke at the bank, where he is a sort of fifth wheel. They
made a place for him there, because he married the president's daughter,
and it was necessary for him to draw a salary."

One question more and Mary breathed easier. She had learned the name of
the bank, and early in the morning she intended to start out to find it.