o you and to the directors. But I'm going to resign. Under
these conditions, nobody has the right to tear the heart out of me and
stick it up for a topic of conversation."

The Squire glanced sideways at the convulsed face of the cashier and
opened his eyes wide; but he promptly hid his wonderment and checked
an exclamation that sounded like a question. "I reckon all of us better
wait till morning, son--Tasper and you and I and all the rest." He
looked up at the bright stars in a hard sky. "A snappy night like this
will cool things off considerable."

"I'll wait till morning, sir! Then I propose to resign," Frank insisted.

"Don't say anything like that in front of Xoa," pleaded Squire Hexter.
"I don't ever want to see again on her face the look she wore when she
followed our own Frank to the cemetery; now that she has sort of adopted
you, boy, I'm afraid she'll have the same look if she had to follow you
to Ike Jones's stage."

The supper was waiting, as the Squire had predicted; but he took no
chances on sitting at table at once and having her keen woman's eyes
survey Vaniman's somber face; he feared that her solicitude would open
up a dangerous topic.

"Leave your biscuits in for a few minutes, Mother," the Squire urged.
"Let's have some literature for an appetizer."

So he sat down and read the brotherly tribute in the new issue of _The
Hornet_, and Xoa's eyes glistened behind her spectacles, though she
decorously deplored the heat of the sting dealt by Usial. Frank,
watching her efforts to hide mirth and display womanly concern at this
distressing affair between brothers, forgot some of his own troubles in
his amusement. Therefore the Squire's tactics were successful, and the
talk at the supper table over the hot biscuits and the cold chicken and
the damson preserves was concerned merely with the characters of the
brothers Britt. Squire Hexter did mention, casually, that Frank had
succeeded in inducing Tasper to stop whipping Usial. Xoa reached and
patted the young man's arm and blessed him with her eyes.

Frank, as usual, helped Xoa to clear away the supper things. Early in
his stay he had been obliged to beg for permission to do it, and she
had consented at last when he pleaded that it made him feel less like a
boarder in the Hexter home.

While she finished her work in the kitchen Vaniman sat with the
Squire in front of the fireplace and smoked his pipe, but not with his
customary comfort; the tobacco s