"Leave you out of so important an arrangement, an arrangement that involves the future of your daughter!" "Then, why should not all three of us go?" she asked. "I have trampled my own pride under my feet by going once," he replied. "Yes, and he treated me with cool impudence. And if I should go again something might happen. That man has humiliated me more than any man I ever met, and once is enough; I couldn't bear an insult in the presence of my wife and daughter. Eva, do you know what that man tried to do? He gained admission to my private office, and actually strove to bunco me out of a hundred dollars." "He may have tried to borrow it, father, but I don't think he tried to get it dishonestly." "Didn't I tell you that he tried to beat me out of the money? Why do you set up a mere opinion against my experience? And why are you so much inclined to take his part? Tell me that. You can't be interested in him?" "I don't want injustice done him." "Oh, no; but you would submit to the injustice he does you. He has robbed you of the society of your younger acquaintances--he compels you to sit almost excluded in a town where you are an acknowledged belle. Young gentlemen are afraid to call on you." "Well, I don't know that it would be exactly proper," she replied. "And," he went on, lifting his voice, "the strangest part of it is that you quietly submit to this treatment when there is a way to free yourself. And I request you to make use of it." He got up, went to the mantel-piece, took up a sea-shell, put it down, turned his back to the fire place, stood there a moment and strode out. "You must do as he commands," said the mother. "I can't." "Don't say that. You must. I have thought it over, and I know it's for the best." "You have permitted him to think it over, and you hope it is for the best," the daughter replied. CHAPTER XV. MUST LEAVE THE TOWN. At eleven o'clock the next day, Zeb Sawyer was to meet McElwin at the bank. The hour was tolled off by a grim old clock standing high in a corner, a rare old time piece with a history, or at least a past, of interest to McElwin, for it had been bought at the forced sale of fixtures belonging to a defunct bank. It struck with solemn self-importance, as if proclaiming the hour to foreclose a mortgage; and though not given to this sort of reflective speculation, McElwin must have been vaguely influenced by its knell-like stroke, for he nearly always glanced up as if a tribute were due to its promptness. A few minutes later Zeb Sawyer was shown into the room. The banker had been sitting in deep thought, with his legs stretched forth, and with his hands in his pockets, but he turned about when the clock struck, and as Sawyer entered the office he was busy with papers on a table in front of him. "Good morning, Zeb; sit down." "Hard at it, I see," said the young man, taking a seat at the opposite side of the table. "Yes, day and night. No rest for the wicked, you know."