king up University Avenue.

"I'm awfully glad to get staying with you," said Evan, suddenly. "I
believe I would have had a renewal of homesickness down in that hotel."

"It's a pleasure for me to have you, old man," returned Robb. "That
homesickness you speak of is bad, while it lasts. It doesn't last
long, though. When you come to my time of life and realize that you
have had a different kind of lonesomeness for years and years, you'll
begin to think ordinary homesickness wasn't in it."

The ice was broken: Evan asked a question he had long wanted to ask:

"Why didn't you ever marry, Mr. Robb?"

The old bankclerk showed neither annoyance nor surprise. One does not
mind being asked a frank personal question out of friendship.

"It was like this," said Robb, unhesitatingly, "I couldn't afford it
until I was thirty. I mean to say, the bank wouldn't let me afford it
till then. The girl was from my home town, down in Quebec. We wrote
to each other for two or three years, but I got discouraged and quit.
I figured that it wasn't fair to spoil her chances; it isn't right for
a man to do it. There were lots of men as good as I that she could
care for, and what right had I to ask her to wait until she was on the
shelf? It happened she married a bank man after all, but he was one of
those guys with a pull; he drew two hundred dollar increases and that
sort of thing. Well, when a fellow gives up in the love-game he
usually begins to booze or do something just as danged foolish.
Although I might have known she could not wait for me, still it hurt to
have her marry somebody else--especially a bank man--and it took me
years to get over it. And," he seemed to breathe the memory of it away
in a sigh, "you'll find scores and scores of men in the bank in my fix
exactly."[1]

Robb's reference to drink reminded Evan that he had not told him about
Penton and the Banfield trouble. Why not tell him? As they sat before
a grate fire he related the tale of the silver, of Penton's strange
actions, and of the inspection.

"Take it from me," said Robb, when the story was finished, "you're a
dead one in the bank's eyes from now on. To-morrow the increases come
out. Just watch yourself get a lemon. Penton has blackballed you to
Castle. Why couldn't it have been Inspector Ward?--he's a good head.
I'll bet they give you a measly fifty to-morrow, Evan."

"In that case I'd be justified in quitting the bank, wouldn't I?"

Robb