One or two were tempted to ask why he hadn’t drawn out his seventy-five pounds, if he had been so sure. But they refrained, having a wambling, a sort of sick feeling in the pit of their stomachs. He was a rude, overbearing fellow, and there was no knowing what he might not bring out by way of retort. The upshot of this and of a hundred other reports which ran about the town like wild-fire, was that a full twenty minutes before the bank opened on the Tuesday, its doors were the butt of a hundred eyes. Many assembled by twos and threes in the High Street and on the Market Place, awaiting the hour; while others took up their stand in the dingy old Butter Cross a little above the bank, where day in and day out old crones sat knitting and the poultry women’s baskets stood on market days. Few thought any longer of concealment; the time for that was past, the feeling of anxiety was too deep and too widespread. Men came together openly, spoke of their fears and cursed the banker, or nervously fingered their pass-books, and compared the packets of notes that they had with them. Some watched the historic clock, but more watched, and more eagerly, the bank. The door, the opening of which, if it were ever opened, meant so much to so many, must have shrunk, seasoned wood as it was, under the intensity of the gaze fixed upon it; while the windows of the bank-house—ugh! the pretender, to set himself up after that fashion, while all the time he was robbing the poor!—were exposed to a fire as constant. Not a curtain moved or a blind was lowered, but the action was marked and analyzed, deductions drawn from it, and arguments based upon it. That was Ovington’s bedroom! No, that. And there was his girl at the lower window—but he would not have been likely to take her with him in any case. As a fact, had they been on the watch a little earlier, they would have been spared one anxiety. For about nine o’clock Ovington had shown himself. He had left the house, crossed with a grave face to the Market Place, and rung the bell at Dean’s. He had entered after a brief parley with an amazed man-servant, had been admitted to see one of the partners, and at a cost to his pride, which only he could measure, the banker had stooped to ask for help. Between concerns doing business in the same town, relations must exist and transactions must pass even when they are in competition; and Dean’s and Ovington’s had been no exception to the rule. But the elder bank had never forgotten that they had once enjoyed a monopoly. They had neither abandoned their claims nor made any secret of their hostility, and Ovington knew that it was to the last degree unlikely that they would support him, even if they had the power to do so.