He heard the town clock strike five, and started up quickly. They were expecting him home to drive, but it was so late now he might as well be later, and pay the weekly bills. There was the butcher and baker and grocer and fruit-stall, and very likely there was something at the candy store, for Louie was fond of candy, and never bought an inferior kind. Then he remembered with a start that his quarter’s rent was due on Monday. Should he pay that, or let it take its chance? “I’ll risk it,” he said. “Judge White can stand a loss better than the trades-people.” Once he thought of going to the judge for a loan. But he put that aside with a laugh which sounded strangely in the silent, shadowy room. “I could not bear his exultant sneer as he refused. I’d rather face the mob,” he said, and began to put on his coat which he had laid aside. Very slowly he went around the rooms, sitting a moment in his chair near the window, standing next where he had so often stood to receive or pay out money, and then where the depositors stood when they paid it in or received it. Thousands and thousands had passed through that opening. Where was it now? “Gone like the dew,” he whispered, involuntarily stretching out his hands as if to take something from an unseen presence. Then, relighting the gas, he went a second time to the safe, counting what was there to see if he had not made a mistake, and feeling the tears in his eyes again because there was so little. “I must go now,” he said. “Good-by, old bank! I shall know the worst or best perhaps when I am here again.” He shut the safe, put out the gas, and went out into the sunshine, with a feeling that he had closed the door on all that was respectable in Thomas Grey. Every one he met had for him a cheery good-afternoon, which he returned, as cheerily, but with a feeling that he ought not to be spoken to in this way. Once, as he walked, he found himself stooping from sheer humility, as he thought what he was and what the world would know him to be erelong if help did not come. He paid the butcher and the baker and the grocer and the confectioner, and a small bill at his tailor’s, which he remembered had been owing for some little time. Then he started for home, where he found his wife anxious to know what had detained him, and Louie absorbed in the contents of two express boxes which had just arrived from Boston and contained the finery intended for Narragansett Pier. “Isn’t this be-u-tiful!” she said to him, holding up an evening dress of silk and lace and chiffon. “Only it cost twice as much as I thought it would. Look,” and she handed her father a bundle of bills, which had come with the express packages, and which made Mr. Grey gasp for a moment. Then he smiled and said: “Nearly a thousand dollars for gewgaws! That is pretty steep. But never mind; they will be paid like the rest. And now give me some strong, clear coffee. My head is splitting.”