where Mrs. Pedders and Luella was waitin' for him.

She'd had some hand-to-hand tussle meanwhile, Mrs. Pedders had; but she'd stuck it out noble. At the start about nine out of ten of her neighbors and kind friends was dead sure she knew where that bunch of securities was stowed, and some of 'em didn't make any bones of sayin' she ought to be in jail along with Pedders. So of course that made it nice and comfy for her all around. But she opened up a little millinery shop in her front parlor, and put up jams and jellies, and raised a few violets under a window sash in the back yard. She didn't quite starve that first year or so; though nobody knew just how close she shaved it. And in time even them that had been her closest friends begun to be sorry for her.41

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When Pedders showed up again all the old stories was hashed over, and the whole of Tullington held its breath watchin' for some sign that he's dug up his hank loot. But it didn't come. Pedders just camped down silent in his old home and let his whiskers grow. Twice a day he made reg'lar trips back and forth from the postoffice, lookin' at nobody, speakin' to nobody. Mrs. Pedders held her usual fall and spring openin's of freak millinery, while Luella taught in the fourth grade of the grammar school and gave a few piano lessons on the side. They didn't act like a fam'ly that had buried treasure.

But what had he done with that hundred and fifty thousand? How could he have blown so much without even acquirin' a toddy blossom? Or had he scattered it in the good old way, buckin' Wall Street? But he'd never seemed like that kind. No, they didn't think he had the nerve to take a chance on a turkey raffle. So that left the mystery deeper'n ever.

"No chance of him bein' not guilty to begin with, eh?" I suggests.

J. Bayard smiles cynical. "So far as I am able to learn," says he, "there is just one person, aside from Mrs. Pedders and her daughter, who believes him innocent. Strangely enough too, that's Norris, who was teller at the time. He's president of the bank now. I had a talk with him this morning. He insists that Pedders was too honest to touch a dollar; says he42 knew him too well. But he offers no explanation as to where the securities went. So there you are! Everyone else regards him as a convicted thief, who scarcely got his just deserts. He's a social outcast, and a broken, spiritless wretch besides. How can I do anything kind and generous for such a man?"

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