am I to do, Mr. Charon?" Nelson asked the accountant, after
Inspector Castle's insult.

"Grin and bear it," repeated the accountant, thinking, no doubt, that
he had hit upon a very happy phrase.

Evan felt that it would take all his moral valor to "bear it" without
the "grinning." He fulfilled that latter half of Charon's command--it
seemed like a command rather than a suggestion, to the bank-trained
clerk--three or four years later.

"But what about the fifty dollars I owe the bank?" he asked.

"I suppose you'll have to put it up," said Charon, studying the
expression of the face before him.

"But there is three months' salary coming to me, according to the Rules
and Regulations," replied Evan.

The accountant did not have to scratch his head; apparently he was
prepared to act deliberately.

"Well," he said, "since they haven't said anything about the silver you
had better say nothing. We are paying you two weeks in advance; let it
go at that."

For a moment Evan figured. There is no crisis where a bankclerk can't
figure. Three months' salary would be $90. That was coming to him.
But he owed the bank $50, and they had paid him $15 more than was due,
leaving only $25 due him. It would not pay to fight them for so small
an amount. In fact, he did not know how to fight; besides, the vim was
knocked out of him and he only wanted to get away from that wretched
office. A strong revulsion possessed him; he turned away from the
accountant without answering, and his eyes wandered about the dark,
bad-smelling office. He suddenly discovered that he hated every desk,
every book, and the brazen-faced fixtures.

But coming to his own desk he found the work piling up, and
mechanically he lifted a pen to straighten things up a bit before
leaving. A good bankman, under any circumstances whatever, cannot
endure to see things in a mess. Evan had scarcely taken up his pen to
make an entry in the "bank book" when Alfred Castle glided toward him
and said in a high-pitched, authoritative tone:

"Never mind that, Nelson; you're through here and we want you to quit."

The fired clerk was too badly wounded, for the moment, to be angry.
Later, he wondered why Fate should have been so spiteful as to send
Castle, above all others, on that humiliating errand. He suddenly
remembered the way Alfred had greeted him on his arrival in Toronto,
and came to the conclusion that from the first he had been under
suspicion with that