She made a little leap at the youngest child, and clasped it convulsively to her bosom. Her swift maternal imagination had made another's loss very near and terrible. "Oh, say, Nell," he broke out, on seeing her sober, "I had the confoundedest time to-day with old lady Bingham--" "'Sh! Baby's gone to sleep." After the children had been put to bed in the little alcove off the sitting-room, Mrs. Sanford came back, to find Jim absorbed over a little book of accounts. "What are you studying, Jim?" Some one knocked on the door before he had time to reply. "Come in!" he said. "Sh! Don't yell so," his wife whispered. "Telegram, Jim," said a voice in the obscurity. "Oh! That you, Sam? Come in." Sam, a lathy fellow with a quid in his cheek, stepped in. "How d' 'e do, Mis' Sanford?" "Set down--se' down." "Can't stop; 'most train-time." Sanford tore the envelope open, read the telegram rapidly, the smile fading out of his face. He read it again, word for word, then sat looking at it. "Any answer?" asked Sam. "No." "All right. Good-night." "Good-night." After the door slammed, Sanford took the sheet from the envelope and reread it. At length he dropped into his chair. "That settles it," he said, aloud. "Settles what? What's the news?" His wife came up and looked over his shoulder. "Settles I've got to go on that nine-thirty train." "Be back on the morning train?" "Yes; I guess so--I mean, of course--I'll have to be--to open the bank." Mrs. Sanford looked at him for a few seconds in silence. There was something in his look, and especially in his tone, that troubled her. "What do you mean? Jim, you don't intend to come back!" She took his arm. "What's the matter? Now tell me! What are you going away for?" He knew he could not deceive his wife's ears and eyes just then, so he remained silent. "We've got to leave, Nell," he admitted at last. "Why? What for?" "Because I'm bu'sted--broke--gone up the spout--and all the rest!" he said, desperately, with an attempt at fun. "Mrs. Bingham and Mrs. McIlvaine have bu'sted me--dead." "Why--why--what has become of the money--all the money the people have put in there?" "Gone up with the rest." "What 've you done with it? I don't--" "Well, I've invested it--and lost it." "James Gordon Sanford!" she exclaimed, trying to realize it. "Was that right? Ain't that a case of--of--" "Shouldn't wonder. A case of embezzlement such as you read of in the newspapers." His tone was easy, but he avoided the look in his wife's beautiful gray eyes. "But it's--stealing--ain't it?" She stared at him, bewildered by his reckless lightness of mood. "It is now, because I've lost. If I'd 'a' won it, it 'ud 'a' been financial shrewdness!" She asked her next question after a pause, in a low voice, and through teeth almost set. "Did you go into this bank to--steal this money? Tell me that!" "No; I didn't, Nell. I ain't quite up to that."