So much, for purposes of argument, being conceded, we may safely figure Emanuel Moon as belonging in the category of the ants, pure and simple--reasonably pure and undeniably simple. However, at the time whereof I write I doubt whether it had ever occurred to anyone to liken him to an ant. His mother had called him Mannie, his employers called him plain Moon, and to practically everybody else he was just little Mr. Moon, who worked in the Commonwealth Bank. He had started there, in the bank, as office boy; by dint of years of untiring fidelity to the interests of that institution he had worked up to the place of assistant cashier, salary seventy-five dollars a month. Privately he nursed an ambition to become, in time, cashier, with a cashier's full powers. It might be added that in this desire he stood practically alone. Emanuel Moon was a little man, rising of thirty-five, who believed that the Whale swallowed Jonah, that if you swore a certain form of oath you were certain of hell-fire, and that Mr. Hiram Blair, president of the Commonwealth Bank, hung the Big Dipper. If the Bible had put it the other way round he would have believed as sincerely that it was Jonah who swallowed the Whale. He had a wistful, bashful little smile, an air of being perpetually busy, and a round, mild eye the colour of a boiled oyster. He also had a most gentle manner and the long, prehensile upper lip that is found only in the South American tapir and the confirmed clarinet player. Emanuel Moon had one besetting sin, and only one--he just would play the clarinet. On an average of three nights a week he withdrew himself from the company assembled about the base-burner stove in the parlour if it were winter, or upon the front porch of Mrs. Teenie Morrill's boarding house if it were seasonable weather, and went up to his room on the third floor and played the clarinet. Some said he played it and some that he merely played at it. He knew Annie Laurie off by heart and for a term of years had been satisfied in that knowledge. Now he was learning another air--The Last Rose of Summer. He prosecuted his musical education on what he called his off evenings. Wednesday night he went to prayer meeting and Sunday night to the regular church service. Tuesday night he always spent at his lodge; and perhaps once in a fortnight he called upon Miss Katie Rouser, who taught in the High School and for whom he was believed to entertain sentiments that did him credit, even though he had never found words in which to voice them.