Without a moment's delay, Toby grabbed his hat and went out in the street. He found the banker lounging around Pete Longley's grocery store, where he had an attentive audience. Toby knew better than to interrupt the old man when he was talking, so he waited for Walton to finish his remarks, which, judging by the steady gleam of the banker's eye, had some underlying motive; and, considering the fact that Pete was a noted gossip, Toby decided that his employer was simply and deliberately setting afloat certain reports that would be on every lip before nightfall. “Oh yes,” Toby heard him saying, “I never was a man to let my right hand know what my left was doing in any deal whatsoever, and so, all this time, I have kept my own counsel in regard to where Fred was at, and why--why I sent him out there. He invested some of the scads that is coming to him in that big boom town and turned his money over as fast as a dog can trot. Boys, I'm actually ashamed to tell you fellows how rich he really is. I reckon you'd get an idea of how he's fixed if I was to say he has made more since he left here than I've raked and scraped together all my life.” “You don't say!” Pete Longley exclaimed. “Well, that certainly is fine. I reckon he did it through his popularity. I never knew a chap that had as many friends.” “Well, he'll be back to shake hands with you all very soon now,” Walton said, gratified at the way his fuse had ignited. “I've been out to see him a time or two, but he has always been too busy to come this way; but he'll get here--he'll lay everything down and head this way some day before long.” Just then Walton caught sight of the breathless Toby at his elbow; he stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk, and bent down to hear what his clerk had to say. “She's waiting for you in your office, Mr. Walton,” Toby panted. “Who?--not--” “Yes, sir; I told her to sit down and I'd fetch you in.” “Oh, Lord, I reckon I'll get it in the neck, Toby!” Walton's face was a veritable mask of gravity and concern. “I reckon she's come to give the boy his walking-papers. I have thought it over till my head swims. No woman of her station and pride would ever let a man come back to her while a thing like that is hanging over him. If the woman and the child was dead and under ground, it might be different. She's come too quick to bear good news--a woman would tussle over a thing like that for a good month, and then ask for more time. No, the jig is up! I deserve it for the string of lies I was wrapping round that gang to make my case as good as possible.”