n known just how much money was stolen from the bank.
Some people said ten thousand dollars, others more. The bank, no doubt
for business motives, claimed that the contents of the safe were intact
and that the robber had been foiled in his design.

But none of this matters to the exaltation of Mr. Pupkin. Good fortune,
like bad, never comes in small instalments. On that wonderful day, every
good thing happened to Peter Pupkin at once. The morning saw him a
hero. At the sitting of the court, the judge publicly told him that his
conduct was fit to rank among the annals of the pioneers of Tecumseh
Township, and asked him to his house for supper. At five o'clock he
received the telegram of promotion from the head office that raised
his salary to a thousand dollars, and made him not only a hero but a
marriageable man. At six o'clock he started up to the judge's house with
his resolution nerved to the most momentous step of his life.

His mind was made up.

He would do a thing seldom if ever done in Mariposa. He would propose to
Zena Pepperleigh. In Mariposa this kind of step, I say, is seldom taken.
The course of love runs on and on through all its stages of tennis
playing and dancing and sleigh riding, till by sheer notoriety of
circumstance an understanding is reached. To propose straight out would
be thought priggish and affected and is supposed to belong only to
people in books.

But Pupkin felt that what ordinary people dare not do, heroes are
allowed to attempt. He would propose to Zena, and more than that, he
would tell her in a straight, manly way that he was rich and take the
consequences.

And he did it.

That night on the piazza, where the hammock hangs in the shadow of
the Virginia creeper, he did it. By sheer good luck the judge had
gone indoors to the library, and by a piece of rare good fortune Mrs.
Pepperleigh had gone indoors to the sewing room, and by a happy trick
of coincidence the servant was out and the dog was tied up--in fact,
no such chain of circumstances was ever offered in favour of mortal man
before.

What Zena said--beyond saying yes--I do not know. I am sure that when
Pupkin told her of the money, she bore up as bravely as so fine a girl
as Zena would, and when he spoke of diamonds she said she would wear
them for his sake.

They were saying these things and other things--ever so many other
things--when there was such a roar and a clatter up Oneida Street as
you never heard, and ther