laughed, grimly, at
the joke of _his_ being short sixty bonds!

At home they thought he was getting run down. His wife--! He was so
kind and thoughtful that she had never been so happy. It made her
fearful that he had some fatal disease and knew he was going to die. Up
at the bank John made a separate bundle of sixty bonds out of the pile
of six hundred so that he could substitute them for those first taken if
the owner called for them. It was not likely that both owners would call
for their bonds on the same day, so that he was practically safe until
one or the other had withdrawn his deposit.

About this time the special accountants came around to make their annual
investigation. It was apparently done in the regular and usual way. One
examiner stood inside the vault and another outside, surrounded by four
or five assistants. They "investigated" the loans. John brought them out
in armfuls and the accountants checked them off and sent them back. When
John brought out the one hundred and forty bonds left in the bundle of
two hundred Overland 4s he placed on top of them the pile of sixty bonds
taken from the other bundle of six hundred. Then he took them back,
shifted over the sixty and brought out the bundle of six hundred
Overland 4s made up in part of the same bonds. It was the easiest thing
going. The experts simply counted the sixty bonds twice--and John had
the sixty bonds (or Prescott had them) down the street. Later the same
firm of "experts" certified to the presence of three hundred thousand
dollars of missing bonds, counting the _same_ bundle, not only twice,
but five and six times! You see, Prescott's John had grown wise in his
generation.

After that he felt reasonably secure. It did seem almost unbelievable
that such a situation could exist, but it was, nevertheless, a fact that
it did. He expected momentarily that his theft would be detected and
that he would be thrown into prison, and the fear of the actual arrest,
the moment of public ignominy, the shock and agony of his wife and
family, were what drove him sleepless into the streets, and every
evening to the theatres to try to forget what must inevitably come; but
the fact that he had "gone wrong," that he was a thief, that he had
betrayed his trust, had lost its edge. He now thought no more of shoving
a package of bonds into his overcoat pocket than he did of taking that
garment down from its peg behind the door. He knew from inquiry that men
who s