ught of a dozen good reasons why he should make haste
slowly; and he recognized in none of them the craftsman's slant toward
indirection--the tradition of the trade which discounts the
straightforward attack and puts a premium upon the methods of the
deer-stalker.

Sooner or later, of course, the attack must be made. But only an
apprentice, he told himself, would be foolish enough to make it without
mapping out all the hazards of the ground over which it must be made. In
a word, he must "place" Miss Farnham precisely; make a careful study of
the young woman and her environment, to the end that every thread of
advantage should be in his hands when he should finally force her to a
confession. For by now the assumption that she knew the mysterious bank
robber was no longer hypothetical in Broffin's mind: it had grown to
the dimensions of a conviction.

Wahaska was not difficult of approach on its gossiping side. Though it
owned a charter and called itself a city, it was still in the
country-town stage which favors a wide distribution of news with the
personal note emphasized. Broffin, conveying the impression that he was
a Louisiana lumberman on a vacation, approved himself as a good
listener, and little more was needed. In a week he had traced the social
outlines of the town as one finds the accent of a painting; in a
fortnight he had grouped the Griersons, the Raymers, the Oswalds, the
Barrs, and the Farnhams in their various interrelations, business and
otherwise.

With the patient curiosity of his tribe he suffered no detail, however
trivial, to escape its jotting down. To familiarize himself with the
goings and comings of one young woman, he made the acquaintance of an
entire town. He knew Jasper Grierson's ambition, and its fruitage in the
practical ownership of Wahaska. He knew that Edward Raymer had borrowed
money from Grierson's bank--and was likely to be unable to pay it when
his notes fell due. He had heard it whispered that there had once been a
love affair between young Raymer and Miss Farnham, and that it had been
broken off by Raymer's infatuation for Margery Grierson. Also, last and
least important of all the gossiping details, as it seemed at the time,
he learned that the bewitching Miss Grierson was a creature of fads;
that within the past month or two she had returned from a Florida trip,
bringing with her a sick man, a total stranger, who had been picked up
on the train, taken to the great house on t