uch of a story, or rather it would be a long one
enough if I gave the whole of it; but the part which I can tell isn't
much. Once upon a time there was a thief, and he stole a quantity of
money out of a bank. It was the Atterbury Bank, of which I am the
president. The theft came at the worst possible time, and there was
great danger, if the money could not be recovered, that the bank would
have to stop payment. Fortunately, we got a clue to the thief's
whereabouts, and I started in search of him, and caught him in a
little village in Canada where he had hidden himself away, and was
feeling quite safe--What makes you look so excited?"

"It is _so_ interesting," said Eyebright. "Weren't you a bit afraid
when you saw him? Did he have a pistol?"

"Pistol? No. Ah, you are thinking of the thieves in story-books, I
see,--terrible villains with masks and blunderbusses. The kind we have
nowadays are quite different,--pretty young men, with nice mustaches
and curly hair, who are very particular about the fit of their gloves
and what kind of cigars they smoke. That's the sort who make off with
bank money. This thief of ours was a young fellow, only a few years
older than my Charley, whom I had known all my life, and his father
before him. I would a great deal rather have had it one of the
old-fashioned kind with a blunderbuss. Well, I found him, and I got
back the money--the bulk of it. A part he had spent. Having secured
it, my first thought was how to get home quickest, for every day's
delay made a great difference to the bank. I had just time to drive
over and catch the Portland steamer, but my wagon broke down six miles
from Malachi, and when I got in she had been gone an hour and a half.
I made inquiries, and found that the Scrapplehead stage started next
morning, so I hired a boat and undertook to row across. It was not
storming then. The man who let the boat did say that the weather
looked 'kind of unsartin,' but I could see no change; it was thick and
murky, but it had been that for days back, and I was in such haste to
get in, that I should probably have tried it had it looked worse than
it did. The distance is not great, and I am used to rowing. Only God's
mercy saved me from capsizing when the first squall struck the boat.
After that, I have only confused memories. All I could do was to keep
the boat head on to the waves, and it was so intensely dark that I
could see nothing. I must have been rowing for hours in the bl