ced Ted. "Ted, old kid," he said sadly, "what'n'ell made
you do it again?"

"What's the joke?" asked Ted.

"Now, Ted," remonstrated Jo Haley, "that way of talkin' won't help
matters none. As I said, I'm rotten at figures. But you're the first
investment that ever turned out bad, and let me tell you I've handled
some mighty bad smelling ones. Why, kid, if you had just come to me on
the quiet and asked for the loan of a hundred or so why----"

"What's the joke, Jo?" said Ted again, slowly.

"This ain't my notion of a joke," came the terse answer. "We're three
hundred short."

The last vestige of Ted Terrill's old-time radiance seemed to flicker and
die, leaving him ashen and old.

"Short?" he repeated. Then, "My God!" in a strangely colorless
voice--"My God!" He looked down at his fingers impersonally, as though
they belonged to some one else. Then his hand clutched Jo Haley's arm
with the grip of fear. "Jo! Jo! That's the thing that has haunted me
day and night, till my nerves are raw. The fear of doing it again.
Don't laugh at me, will you? I used to lie awake nights going over that
cursed business of the bank--over and over--till the cold sweat would
break out all over me. I used to figure it all out again, step by step,
until--Jo, could a man steal and not know it? Could thinking of a thing
like that drive a man crazy? Because if it could--if it could--then----"

"I don't know," said Jo Haley, "but it sounds darned fishy." He had a
hand on Ted's shaking shoulder, and was looking into the white, drawn
face. "I had great plans for you, Ted. But Minnie Wenzel's got it all
down on slips of paper. I might as well call her, in again, and we'll
have the whole blamed thing out."

Minnie Wenzel came. In her hand were slips of paper, and books with
figures in them, and Ted looked and saw things written in his own hand
that should not have been there. And he covered his shamed face with his
two hands and gave thanks that his mother was dead.

There came three sharp raps at the office door. The tense figures within
jumped nervously.

"Keep out!" called Jo Haley, "whoever you are." Whereupon the door
opened and Birdie Callahan breezed in.

"Get out, Birdie Callahan," roared Jo. "You're in the wrong pew."

Birdie closed the door behind her composedly and came farther into the
room. "Pete th' pasthry cook just tells me that Minnie Wenzel told th'
day clerk, who told the barkeep, who told th' ja