“Don’t you see? If there’s going to be a run to-morrow, there’s absolutely nothing I can do at ten o’clock in the evening to stop it. He knows that; and he knows I know he knows it. He did it for amusement, I suppose, though that’s not like him. Perhaps it was to give me time to get scared over night.” He paused and meditatively brought his clenched fist down on the arm of his chair twice, very softly. “I’m getting mad,” he said, rising. “It’s time I went to bed.” Left alone in the library, Dick tried to read; but every little while the book would drop idly to her knee, and grave-faced, with all the light gone out of her eyes, she would fall to wondering what would come of it all, and just what was the value of the stake that should compensate for this tragic shipwreck she had seen this evening. No one but Dick, not even Jack Dorlin, was ever to know how complete that wreck had been; for she could never tell what had happened after she had shut the door of her den behind Harriet Sponley. When she turned away from it to thinking of John Bagsbury, she smiled. Perhaps because any sort of gesture was so unusual with him, that gentle little movement of his clenched fist had caused her a shiver of rather pleasant excitement. In its very mildness, its total inadequacy, lay its significance. It seemed to Dick a sort of ironical prophecy. She did not exactly hope to see him in a magnificent rage before this struggle was well over; but she could not help imagining with an exultant thrill what a hammer that big, lean fist would be if ever it should be driven in grim earnest. But if she expected him to show any sign of excitement when he came down to breakfast next morning, she was disappointed. John drank his coffee, glanced over the paper, and read aloud, with some appearance of satisfaction, the weather prediction to the effect that it would be fair, followed by showers in the afternoon; and then, as always in any tolerable weather, he set out to walk down to the bank. Ordinarily his pace did not vary one hundred yards either way from the easy swing of four miles an hour, but to-day something seemed to be driving him. Faster and faster he would go, glancing enviously at the cars roaring and rocking by on their way down town. Then he would check himself with the impatient admonition that there was no hurry. The miles were interminable that morning, and he was tired when he reached the end of the last one. But they were behind him now, and with a long breath of relief he turned the corner that commanded a view of the bank, and saw--