Three men sat in the private office of the National Bank, the windows of which overlooked the town square. They were the tutelary deities of all public occasions in the town. They always sat on the platform behind the speaker on Decoration Days. They were supposed to control municipal elections, but not one of them had ever "run" for an office. Deities don't. They are the powers behind the throne. These men represented Providence in Jordantown. And Providence is always behind the scenes. The trouble now was that by an ordinary and inevitable process of nature they had lost control of the situation. A little old woman had died who had no sense, and who for that very reason might have done something foolish with the William J. Mosely Estate, which was the very foundation upon which all deities and providences rested in that place. "The Estate owns your National Bank Building, doesn't it?" asked Martin Acres, who knew that it did. "Yes, and a controlling interest in the stock besides, more is the pity! I never like to have a woman own stock in my bank," Stark Coleman answered, throwing himself back upon the spring of his revolving chair. "Why?" This from Acres, who did like to have women make accounts at his store. "Dangerous. It is well enough for women to owe--that's their nature--but not to own. Look at the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad scandal!" He was a short fat man with large blue eyes beneath swollen lids, and at the present moment some inner pressure seemed to increase their prominence. "What has that to do with women?" "Proves my point. Wouldn't have been such a racket over that scandal if half the widows and orphans in New England hadn't been pinched. Men are good losers. They keep quiet. Know better than to destroy their credit by squealing. Women have no credit, so they all squeal. And the sentimental public always adds to the clamour," Coleman concluded, mopping his face. "Briggs collects rent from every store and business house around this square," Acres went on. "And he told me he handles mortgages on nineteen thousand acres of land in this county," laughed the third man, who was young and who had been listening with the detached air of a humourist. "You can afford to laugh, Sasnett," retorted the banker; "you are one of the few men in this town not affected by this--er--disaster. But a good many of the rest of us may find ourselves in a hell of a hole if that woman has willed everything she had to the church or to some orphan asylum!" "Why?" asked Sasnett, still smiling in the provoking manner of a man who has nothing to lose. "I couldn't do business with every loan and investment to be passed upon by a board of directors reeking with preachers and eleemosynary trustees. They are all damphules, with empty breeches pockets, and craws filled with morbid scruples. How do I know there won't be a woman among them! Good Lord! Think of a woman on the board of directors in a bank!" snorted Coleman.