"Exactly," declared Hampstead again with that air of finality, "and if I should fail to be true to my part of the trust, what has passed between us this morning has been the mere compounding of a felony and not the act of a priest of God looking to the regeneration of a soul." In a wordless interval, Rollie Burbeck pressed the minister’s hand once more and departed, his face still wearing a veiled expression as if he had not quite caught the import of all that had been said. But neither, for that matter, had the minister; although he was never surer of himself than now, when he ushered his guest out of the side door with a cheery, courage-giving smile, and hastened in to his greatly delayed breakfast. With a thoughtful air and a feeling of intense satisfaction in his breast, he unfolded his napkin, broke his egg, and sipped his coffee, still with no suspicion that this was the day of all days for him, or that he had just sawed and hammered the cross which might make his title clear to saviourhood. *CHAPTER XXV* *HIS BRIGHT IDEA* Young Burbeck’s desk at the Amalgamated National was in an open space behind a marble counter. About him in the same open space were desks of two other assistant cashiers. Back of these were the private offices of the cashier, the president and the vice-president, as well as one or two reception rooms. Beyond the marble counter was a broad public aisle, on the farther side of which the tellers and bookkeepers worked, screened by the usual wire and glass. The safe deposit vaults were in the basement and reached by a stairway from the open lobby on the first floor. Hurrying from the minister’s house, Burbeck reached his desk at ten minutes before the hour of nine. This left him ten minutes of waiting before he could get the eleven hundred dollars of the Wadham currency; and waiting was the very hardest thing he could do under the circumstances. He was the first of the assistant cashiers to arrive, but the cashier, Parma, heavy-jowled, with dark wall eyes, was visible through the open door of his office, checking over some of the auditor’s sheets with a gold pencil in his pudgy hand. His thick shoulders and broad, unresponsive back somehow threw a chill of apprehension into Rollie. What brought that old owl down here at this time of the morning, he wondered.