ngers, and never but once in
his life had he been so near to leaving all hope behind. He waited
patiently by the barred windows until the clerk, who was counting bills,
chose to look up at him.

"Want to draw money?" he demanded.

The words seemed charged with irony. William Wetherell told him,
falteringly, his name and business, and he thought the man looked at him
compassionately.

"You'll have to see Mr. Worthington," he said; "he hasn't gone to the
mills yet."

"Dudley Worthington?" exclaimed Wetherell.

The teller smiled.

"Yes. He's the president of this bank."'

He opened a door in the partition, and leaving Cynthia dangling her feet
from a chair, Wetherell was ushered, not without trepidation, into the
great man's office, and found himself at last in the presence of Mr.
Isaac D. Worthington, who used to wander up and down Coniston Water
searching for a mill site.

He sat behind a table covered with green leather, on which papers were
laid with elaborate neatness, and he wore a double-breasted skirted coat
of black, with braided lapels, a dark purple blanket cravat with a large
red cameo pin. And Mr. Worthington's features harmonized perfectly with
this costume--those of a successful, ambitious man who followed custom
and convention blindly; clean-shaven, save for reddish chops, blue eyes
of extreme keenness, and thin-upped mouth which had been tightening year
by year as the output of the Worthington Minx increased.

"Well, sir," he said sharply, "what can I do for you?"

"I am William Wetherell, the storekeeper at Coniston."

"Not the Wetherell who married Cynthia Ware!"

No, Mr. Worthington did not say that. He did not know that Cynthia Ware
was married, or alive or dead, and--let it be confessed at once--he did
not care.

This is what he did say:--

"Wetherell--Wetherell. Oh, yes, you've come about that note--the mortgage
on the store at Coniston." He stared at William Wetherell, drummed with
his fingers on the table, and smiled slightly. "I am happy to say that
the Brampton Bank does not own this note any longer. If we did,--merely
as a matter of business, you understand" (he coughed),--"we should have
had to foreclose."

"Don't own the note!" exclaimed Wetherell. "Who does own it?"

"We sold it a little while ago--since you asked for the extension--to
Jethro Bass."

"Jethro Bass!" Wetherell's feet seemed to give way under him, and he sat
down.

"Mr. Bass is a little quixotic--that is