silently for their balances after the strenuous business day, a menacing shadow fell. It was not only ruin; it was ruin with disgrace. David was far from holding his father responsible in any moral sense, this though it was apparent that the present state of affairs had been long threatened. That it had not reached a climax sooner was due chiefly to the fact that for many years the country-town bank had done business only with honest customers. David was not blind to his father’s one amiable weakness. It was known far and wide that Adam Vallory could[24] never say “No” to a sufficiently importunate borrower; also, that he judged all men by his own upright standards.

[24]

David Vallory got up from the table-desk at which he had been working and slowly struggled into his coat. Grown man as he was, this was his first rude collision with life in its commercial aspect, and he rose from the preliminary grapple with a belittling feeling of inadequacy; as if, as a boy, he had been rudely buffeted into the gutter by a man. But the feeling did not becloud the clearly defined conclusion at which he had arrived. He did not—could not—minify the impending consequences. The bank examiner would come, and at his coming the pitiless mill of publicity would begin to grind. There would be exposure and a criminal prosecution. Those who knew Adam Vallory, the man, would refuse to believe that he had consciously committed a crime; but to the wider world he would figure merely as another addition to the ranks of those who gamble with other people’s money; a banker who had taken the desperate chance involved in going on and receiving deposits when there was no reasonable hope of repaying the depositors.

The old-fashioned clock on the wall was striking four as the volunteer checker of accounts[25] gathered up the slips of scratch paper which he had covered with figures and passed out to the small room at the rear of the working space. The gray-faced man bending dejectedly over his desk and waiting had no illusions. “Well, son?” he said, as David came in.

[25]

The young man dropped heavily into a chair and sat for some moments staring at the slips of scratch paper.

“This morning when you told me where we stood you didn’t make it any worse than it really is,” he announced soberly. “Winkle gave me his figures just now—the withdrawals for to-day. If they come after us to-morrow as they have to-day, we shan’t be able to last until three o’clock. I’ve gone over everything in the vault with a fine-tooth comb; we need 

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