He got into bed. With a vexed “Hang it!” he mused: “I suppose John would pray, no matter how chilly the floor was.” He got out of bed and from the inscrutable Lord of the Universe he sought forgiveness—not for Jasper Holt, but for the denominations who lacked the true faith of Soul Hope Fraternity. He returned to bed and slept till the middle of the morning, lying with his arms behind his head, a smile on his face. Thus did Jasper Holt, without the mysterious pangs of death, yet cease to exist, and thus did John Holt come into being not merely as an apparition glimpsed on Sunday and Wednesday evenings, but as a being living twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. III The inhabitants of Rosebank were familiar with the occasional appearances of John Holt, the eccentric recluse, and they merely snickered about him when on the Saturday evening following the Friday that has been chronicled he was seen to come out of his gate and trudge down to a news and stationery shop on Main Street. He purchased an evening paper and said to the clerk: “You can have the _Morning Herald_ delivered at my house every morning—27 Humbert Avenue.” “Yuh, I know where it is. Thought you had kind of a grouch on newspapers and all those lowbrow things,” said the clerk pertly. “Ah, did you indeed? The _Herald_, every morning, please. I will pay a month in advance,” was all John Holt said, but he looked directly at the clerk, and the man cringed. John attended the meeting of the Soul Hope Fraternity the next evening—Sunday—but he was not seen on the streets again for two and a half days. There was no news of the disappearance of Jasper Holt till the following Wednesday, when the whole thing came out in a violent, small-city, front-page story, headed: PAYING TELLER _Social Favorite—Makes Get-away_ The paper stated that Jasper Holt had been missing for four days, and that the officers of the bank, after first denying that there was anything wrong with his accounts, had admitted that he was short one hundred thousand dollars—two hundred thousand, said one report. He had purchased a ticket for Wakamin, this state, on Friday, and a trainman, a customer of the bank, had noticed him on the train, but he had apparently never arrived at Wakamin.