Perhaps if she had been less obsessed with the war, Joan might have been better prepared for what was coming.... One day, on her way home from the Red Cross rooms, she bought herself an early edition of an evening paper, and was looking over the headlines when she came across the following: SHORTAGE DISCOVERED BOOKS OF MOORE AND COMPANY IN HANDS OF EXPERT Farther down, aghast, incredulous, she read the name of her husband. When she reached home, he was already there. Johnny Carmichael and Ellen were with him, both talking at once. They stopped as Joan came bursting in. "Archie! This can't be _true_?" He had risen to go to her. Now he sank back in his chair, nodding. "I been tellin' him he's got to git out while the gittin's good," muttered Ellen Neal, her language consorting oddly with the tense fear in her face. "Here's plenty of money"--she held out a battered pocket-book. "He can hop on the L. & N. train as it passes Fourth Street. They ain't a minute to waste! The main thing's to git him away before they--take him!" "She's right!" insisted Johnny Carmichael, stuttering with excitement. "Once he's out of the way, my father'll get everything fixed. He's closeted with Moore now. We've stopped that beastly article in the paper--lots of people won't have seen the first edition. Father's taken on the case--Mrs. Blair, you've got to make Archie _wake up_!" But Joan could not speak. Archie rose to his feet again. He seemed invested with a new, quiet dignity. He put a hand on each of their shoulders. "I'm not going to run, of course," he said. "Thank you just the same. Now cut along, will you? I want to talk to my wife." CHAPTER LII Always afterwards, in thinking of that nightmare time, Joan remembered with a stab of remorse that when he held out his arms to her she had not gone to them--He did not make the mistake again. In the hour they had together before others came, he made things as plain to her as he could. The sum was not large as defalcations go. Moore and Company would not suffer for it--they were a rich firm; and later when he had served out his term he would be able to pay them back. This he repeated over and over. The trouble had commenced with the purchase of the house. It was too ambitious. Archie, struggle as he might, had begun shortly to fall behind with the payments, and had borrowed more money on it to meet them. (Joan recalled signing the papers, which meant nothing to her; merely "business.") Somehow, what Archie made never went quite far enough. Not through her fault!--this, too, he insisted upon again and again. How was she to guess how things were, so long as her own and the household allowances were paid to her regularly? "Oh, but why didn't you _tell_ me?" "A fellow don't like to admit that he's bitten off more than he can chew, till he's sure."