He turned his properties into cash as quickly as he could, and bought a ticket for Fawcettville. He arrived in the village on a late night train, as he had planned. The place was deserted. People were asleep. With a big throb at his heart he saw that the building which he had once occupied was empty. It was just as he had left it on that third of July morning. Something rose in his throat and choked him as he turned away. After all he loved Fawcettville—loved it more than any other place on earth, and the tears came into his eyes as he passed reverently the old familiar spots, and came at last to Kitty Duchene’s home, with the maples whispering mournfully above him. He almost sobbed aloud when he saw a light in Kitty’s window. For a long time he sat under the maples, until the light went out and he could no longer see Kitty’s shadow against the curtain. All about him were the homes of the people who had loved and trusted him, and he groaned aloud as he turned back.

No one in Fawcettville knew of Bobby McTabb’s visit that night. No one in the world knew of the scheme which Bobby carried away with him. On the second day the owner of the bank building received a letter, signed by a stranger, asking him to clean and repair the old building, and enclosing an one-hundred dollar bill for the first quarter’s rent. It was twice the rent Bobby McTabb had paid in the old days, and the mystery became the talk of the village.

Bobby came again on the late night train, got off at Henderson, three miles west of Fawcettville, and drove over in a rig. The rig was heavily laden with various things, but chiefly with a big gilt and gold lettered sign, such as Fawcettville had never known. There were a few who heard the driving of the midnight nails in that sign as it was hung over the new building. After that two men went through the village, as stealthily as thieves, and on every barn and store, and even on the fronts of houses, were pasted bills two feet square; and at dawn other messengers began delivering sealed letters to the farmers for miles around.

The first bright rays of the morning sun lighted up the gilt and gold letters on Bobby’s sign, and those letters read:

Sile Jenks, the milkman, was the first to read the bill in front of his house, and with a wild yell he began awakening his neighbors. Inside of half an hour Fawcettville was in an uproar. Men and women came hurrying toward the old bank building, and in front of that building, with a happy smile on his face, stood Bobby McTabb. Men rushed up to him and wrung his hands until it seemed as though they must pull 

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