robber, and the president,
stealing a glance at the face of his persecutor, saw the blue eyes
blazing with excitement.

"It is your time to pray, Mr. Galbraith," said the spoiler in low tones.
"If you have given your man the signal----"

But the signal had not been given. The teller was re-entering the cage
with the bulky packet of money-paper.

"You needn't open it," said the young man at the president's elbow. "The
bank's count is good enough for me." And when the window wicket had been
unlatched and the money passed out, he stuffed the loose bills
carelessly into his pocket, put the package containing the ninety-nine
thousand dollars under his arm, nodded to the president, backed swiftly
to the street door and vanished.

Then it was that Mr. Andrew Galbraith suddenly found speech, opening
his thin lips and pouring forth a torrent of incoherence which presently
got itself translated into a vengeful hue and cry; and New Orleans the
unimpetuous had its sensation ready-made.

IV

_IO TRIUMPHE!_

If Kenneth Griswold, backing out of the street door of the Bayou State
Security and vanishing with his booty, had been nothing more than a
professional "strong-arm man," he would probably have been taken and
jailed within the hour, if only for the reason that his desperate cast
for fortune included no well-wrought-out plan of escape. But since he
was at once both wiser and less cunning than the practised bank robber,
he threw his pursuers off the scent by an expedient in which artlessness
and daring quite beyond the gifts of the journeyman criminal played
equal parts.

Once safely in the street, with a thousand dollars in his pocket and the
packet of bank-notes under his arm, he was seized by an impulse to do
some extravagant thing to celebrate his success. It had proved to be
such a simple matter, after all: one bold stroke; a tussle, happily
bloodless, with the plutocratic dragon whose hold upon his treasure was
so easily broken; and presto! the hungry proletary had become himself a
power in the world, strong to do good or evil, as the gods might direct.

This was the prompting to exultation as it might have been set in words;
but in Griswold's thought it was but a swift suggestion, followed
instantly by another which was much more to the immediate purpose. He
was hungry: there was a restaurant next door to the bank. Without
thinking overmuch of the risk he ran, and perhaps not at all of the
audacious subtl