At such times the troublesome memory of his father's words came to him, "You need a wife that will work with you and be a partner and not fail you when trouble comes." Try as he would the young man could not obliterate those haunting words from his brain. Sometimes he felt almost convinced in his own heart that he loved Isabel Souders--she was so appealing and charming and, while she rebuffed his confidences about his work, nevertheless showed so deep an interest in him generally, that he was temporarily blinded by it and excused her lack of real interest on the world-old ground that pretty women are not supposed to bother about prosaic affairs of the male wage-earners of the race. There were moments when her beauty so thrilled him that he felt moved to tell her he loved her and wanted to marry her, but somewhere in the subconscious mind of him must have dwelt the succinct words of the poster, "When in doubt, _don't!_" So the moments of fascination passed and the words of love were left unsaid. "Some day," he thought, "I'll know, I'll be sure. It will probably come to me like a flash of lightning whether I love her or not. I shouldn't be so undecided. I think if it were the real thing I feel for her there would be not the shadow of a doubt in my heart concerning it. A man should feel that the woman he wants to marry is the only one in the universe for him. Somehow, I can't feel that about her. But there's no hurry about marrying. We'll just go on being capital friends. Meanwhile I can be saving money so that if the time comes when I marry I'll be able to support a wife. Things look pretty rosy for me at present. Since Father is fixed with that legacy and the boys are old enough to take my place on the farm I have time to study and advance. I'm in luck all around; guess I got a horseshoe round my neck!" But the emblem of good luck must have soon lost its potency. The bank force was surprised one day by an unexpected examination of the books. "What's the trouble?" asked Martin of another worker in the bank. "I don't know. Ask old Buehlor. He acts as though he knew." Martin approached the gray-haired president, who was stamping about his place like an angry dog on leash. "Anything the matter, sir? Can I help in any way?" "Why, yes, there seems to be," he snapped. "Come in, Landis." He opened the door of his private office and Martin followed him inside. He gave one long look into the face of the young man--"I'm going to tell you. Perhaps you can make things easier for us to adjust in case there's anything wrong. An investigation has been ordered. One of our heaviest depositors seems to have some inside information that some one is spending the bank's money for personal use." "Good guns! In this bank? A thief?" Horror was printed on the face of Martin.