“Glad to have you, if you'll come. Tell him to come, Mabel.” Miss Colton's invitation was not over-cordial. “I presume Mr. Paine knows what is best for him to do,” she said. “Of course we shall be glad to have him, if he will come.” I declined, and, after thanking me for the sail and the pleasure of the fishing trip, they left me, Colton carrying his big squiteague by the gills, its tail slapping his leg as he climbed the bluff. A moment later I followed. The night was, as my feminine passenger had said, wonderfully quiet, and sounds carried a long way. As I reached the juncture of the path and the Lane I heard a voice which I recognized as Mrs. Colton's. She was evidently standing on the veranda of the big house and I heard every word distinctly. “You are so unthinking, James! You and Mabel have no regard for my feelings at all. I have been worried almost to death. Do you realize the time? I warned you against trusting yourself to the care of that common FELLOW--” The “fellow” heard no more. He did not wish to. He was tramping heavily through the dew-soaked undergrowth. He needed now no counsel against “playing with fire.” The cutting contempt of Mrs. James W. Colton's remark was fire-extinguisher sufficient for that night. Miss Colton and I met again at the door of the bank a day or two later, just at closing time. Sam Wheeler had already gone and I left George at his desk, poring over papers and busily figuring. He was working over time much of late and explained his industry by the fact of his approaching marriage and his desire to make things easy for me to handle while he was on his brief wedding trip. I was not much alarmed by the prospect. He was to be gone but a week and I had become sufficiently familiar with the routine to feel confident in assuming the responsibility. Small, my predecessor, had a brother who had formerly been employed in the bank and was now out of work, and he was coming in to help during the cashier's absence. I was not worried by the prospect of being left in charge, but I was worried about George. He, so it seemed to me, had grown pale and thin. Also he was nervously irritable and not at all like his usual good-natured self. I tried to joke him into better humor, but he did not respond to my jokes. He seemed, too, to realize that his odd behavior was noticeable, for he said: “Don't mind my crankiness, Ros. I've got so much on my mind that I'd be mean to my old grandmother, if I had one, I guess likely. Don't let my meanness trouble you; it isn't worth trouble.” I laughed. “George,” I said, “if I ever dreamed of such a thing as getting married myself, you would scare me out of it. You ought to be a happy man, and act like one; instead you act as if you were about to be jailed.” He caught his breath with a sort of gasp. Then, after a pause and without looking up, he asked slowly: “Jailed? What in the world made you say that, Ros?”