and come and tell me."  He turned suddenly and faced Ted.  "Ted, old kid," he said sadly, "what'n'ell made you do it again?" 

 "What's the joke?" asked Ted. 

 "Now, Ted," remonstrated Jo Haley, "that way of talkin' won't help matters none. As I said, I'm rotten at figures. But you're the first investment that ever turned out bad, and let me tell you I've handled some mighty bad smelling ones. Why, kid, if you had just come to me on the quiet and asked for the loan of a hundred or so why——" 

 "What's the joke, Jo?" said Ted again, slowly. 

 "This ain't my notion of a joke," came the terse answer.  "We're three hundred short." 

 The last vestige of Ted Terrill's old-time radiance seemed to flicker and die, leaving him ashen and old. 

 "Short?" he repeated. Then, "My God!" in a strangely colorless voice—"My God!"  He looked down at his fingers impersonally, as though they belonged to some one else. Then his hand clutched Jo Haley's arm with the grip of fear.  "Jo! Jo! That's the thing that has haunted me day and night, till my nerves are raw. The fear of doing it again. Don't laugh at me, will you? I used to lie awake nights going over that cursed business of the bank—over and over—till the cold sweat would break out all over me. I used to figure it all out again, step by step, until—Jo, could a man steal and not know it? Could thinking of a thing like that drive a man crazy? Because if it could—if it could—then——" 

 "I don't know," said Jo Haley, "but it sounds darned fishy." He had a hand on Ted's shaking shoulder, and was looking into the white, drawn face.  "I had great plans for you, Ted. But Minnie Wenzel's got it all down on slips of paper. I might as well call her, in again, and we'll have the whole blamed thing out." 

 Minnie Wenzel came. In her hand were slips of paper, and books with figures in them, and Ted looked and saw things written in his own hand that should not have been there. And he covered his shamed face with his two hands and gave thanks that his mother was dead. 

 There came three sharp raps at the office door. The tense figures within jumped nervously. 

 "Keep out!" called Jo Haley, "whoever you are."  Whereupon the door opened and Birdie Callahan breezed in. 

 "Get out, Birdie Callahan," roared Jo.  "You're in the wrong pew." 

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