CHAPTER XVI |TOBY LASSITER returned from the West one sultry evening at dusk, and went straight to the house of his employer. He found the banker seated on the front porch without his coat, and cooling himself with a big palm-leaf fan. “So you are back?” he said, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder into the unlighted hall. “Get that chair and pull it up close. If my wife happens to come out while you are talking, sort o' switch off to something else--the market reports--anything under high heavens except what you went off for. She never took to Fred noway, and anything in his favor or otherwise sets her tongue going. She thinks he is plumb out of my present calculations, and any hint that he was getting on his feet would give her tantrums. She is back in the kitchen, seeing to the supper things. She is as close as the bark of a tree, and is afraid that nigger woman will lug off supplies. I took her because she was stingy. I sort o' admired it at first, but it ain't as becoming in a woman as it is in a man. I don't know why, but it ain't. Well, fire away. What did you do?” “I went straight out to Gate City, Mr. Walton,” the clerk began, in the tone of a man full of an experience. “I would have written home, but I didn't get on to much of importance the first three days, and then I knew I could get back about as quick as a letter could.” “Yes, of course,” Walton said. “Well?” “I found it about the most hustling town I ever struck, Mr. Walton. It is wide open, I tell you. Of course, it isn't anything like as big, but it was as busylooking on the main streets as Atlanta or Nashville. I thought best not to be seen about the very _centre_, you know, so I took board in a little hotel in what they call 'Railroad Town,' on the east side, among the machine-shops. I pretended to be looking for a job.” “You did, eh? You say you did?”