Before he realized exactly what he was doing, he found his voice crying: “Impossible, Martin! Quite impossible! Mahala and her mother have their hearts set on the girl’s going to college. They have prepared for it for years. They have her clothing very well in hand, and in any event, I don’t think Mahala has ever given marriage a thought, and in that matter, of course, I couldn’t attempt to coerce her.” All the cordiality dropped from Martin Moreland’s voice; all congeniality faded from his face. The lean lines into which it fell gave Mahlon Spellman a start, for he found they suggested to him the long head and the set face of the bronze dogs watching outside. There was something so casual that it was almost an insult in the way Martin Moreland reached into a pigeonhole he had previously prepared in his desk and pulled out an imposing packet of papers. Slowly he began to open them and to spread them out on his desk. Mahlon Spellman, quivering like a moth impaled on a setting board, surmised what those papers were. His surmise was of no help to the internal disturbances at that minute racking him. As Moreland spoke, Mahlon Spellman forgot the bronze dogs, and there was something in the slick smoothness of the banker’s voice that made him think of a cat instead—a cat proportioned with the same exaggeration in comparison with the remainder of its species as were the dogs; a cat big enough to take a man and roll him under its paws, and toss him up and set sharp teeth into him until he cried out, and let him think he was escaping, and draw him back with velvet paws the claws of which flashed out occasionally. “Your business is not very flourishing since the coming of the new store, is it, Mahlon?” asked Martin Moreland. Mahlon Spellman’s lips were dry, his throat was dry, his stomach was congested, his bowels were in spasms. He could do little more than tightly grip the arms of his chair and shake his head. “Is there any chance of your being able to pay even the interest on what you owe me?” asked Martin Moreland, now a man of business, staring penetrantly at Mr. Spellman. Mahlon sank in his chair. He literally cowered. As he collapsed, it seemed to his tortured brain that Martin Moreland was increasing in size and consequence. He looked to Mahlon, in his hour of extremity, as much bigger and colder and harder than an ordinary man as were those damned dogs at his doorway bigger than an ordinary dog. There was insult, positive insult, in the way he gathered up the big sheaf of notes. How, in all God’s world, did there come to be so many? There seemed to be dozens and dozens of them. How did he dare to flip them through his fingers and leaf them over and beat them on the edge of his desk as if they were not the very heart and the blood and the brain, not only of himself but of his wife—his delicate, beautiful wife—and his daughter? And what was it that this fiend in human form was saying?