ept it locked up for years. And when he discovered that the date
on the letter and the date on the forged note were the same, the son
knew the meaning of the tears. But it was all for the Larger Good, and
so John Barclay won another game with Destiny.

But the silver cord was straining, and morning after morning the old
pitcher went to the fountain, to be battered and battered and
battered. His books, which he kept himself, grew spotted and dirty,
and day by day in the early spring the general dreaded lest some
depositor would come into the bank and call for a sum in cash so large
that it would take the cash supply below the legal limit, and that an
inspector would suddenly appear again and discover the deficiency.
Except Barclay the other directors knew nothing of the situation. They
signed whatever reports the general or Barclay put before them; there
came a time in April when any three of a dozen depositors could have
taken every penny out of the bank. When the general was unusually low
in spirits, Barclay sent Colonel Culpepper around to the bank with his
anthem about times being better when the spring really opened, and for
an hour the general was cheerful, but when the colonel went, the
general always saw the axe hanging over his head. And then one morning
late in April--one bright Sunday morning--the wheel of the cistern
was broken, and they found the old man cold in his bed with his face
to the wall.

John Barclay was on a horse riding to the railroad--four hours away,
before the town was up for late Sunday morning breakfast. That
afternoon he went into Topeka on a special engine, and told a Topeka
banker who dealt with the bank of Sycamore Ridge the news of the
general's death, and asked for five thousand dollars in silver to
allay a possible run. At midnight he drove into the Ridge with the
money, and the bank opened in the morning at seven o'clock instead of
nine, so that a crowd might not gather, and depositors who came, saw
back of Barclay a great heap of silver dollars, flanked by all the
gold and greenbacks in the vault, and when a man asked for his money
he got it in silver, and when Oscar Fernald presented a check for over
three thousand dollars, Barclay paid it out in silver, and in the
spirit of fun, Sheriff Jake Dolan, who heard of the counting and
recounting of the money while it was going on, brought in a
wheelbarrow and Oscar wheeled his money to his hotel, while every
loafer in town followed hi