"Oh! Well, now, you try them pills I was tellin' you of." Arrived at the bank, he let himself in and locked the door behind him. He stood in the middle of the floor a few minutes, then went behind the railing and sat down. He didn't build a fire, though it was cold and damp, and he shivered as he sat leaning on the desk. At length he drew a large sheet of paper toward him and wrote something on it in a heavy hand.
He was writing on this when Lincoln entered at the back, whistling boyishly. "Hello, Jim! Ain't you up early? No fire, eh?" He rattled at the stove.
Sanford said nothing, but finished his writing. Then he said, quietly, "You needn't build a fire on my account, Link."
"Why not?"
"Well, I'm used up."
"What's the matter?"
"I'm sick, and the business has gone to the devil." He looked out of the window.
Link dropped the poker, and came around behind the counter, and stared at Sanford with fallen mouth.
"Wha'd you say?"
"I said the business had gone to the devil. We're broke busted-petered-gone up the spout." He took a sort of morbid pleasure in saying these things.
"What's busted us? Have-"
"I've been speciflatin' in copper. My partner's busted me."
Link came closer. His mouth stiffened and an ominous look came into his eyes. "You don't mean to say you've lost my money, and Mother's, and Uncle Andrew's, and all the rest?"
Sanford was getting irritated. "- it! What's the use? I tell you, yes!
It's all gone-very cent of it."
Link caught him by the shoulder as he sat at the desk. Sanford's tone enraged him. "You thief! But you'll pay me back, or I'll-"
"Oh, go ahead! Pound a sick man, if it'll do you any good," said Sanford with a peculiar recklessness of lifeless misery. "Pay y'rsell out of the safe. Here's the combination."
Lincoln released him and began turning the knob of the door. At last it swung open, and he searched the money drawers. Less than forty dollars, all told. His voice was full of helpless rage as he turned at last and walked up close to Sanford's bowed head.
"I'd like to pound the life out o' you!"
"You're at liberty to do so, if it'll be any satisfaction." This desperate courage awed the younger man. He gazed at Sanford in amazement.
"If you'll cool down and wait a little, Link, I'll tell you all about it.
I'm sick as a horse. I guess I'll go home. You can put this up in the window and go home, too, if you want to."
Lincoln saw that Sanford was sick. He was shivering, and drops of sweat were on his white forehead. Lincoln stood aside silently and let him go out.
"Better lock up, Link. You can't do anything by staying here."
Lincoln took refuge in a boyish phrase that would have made anyone but a sick man laugh: "Well, this is a -of a note!"-
He took up the paper. It read:
BANK CLOSED
TO MY CREDITORS AND DEPOSITORS
Through a combination of events I find myself obliged to temporarily suspend payment. I ask the depositors to be patient, and their claims will be met. I think I can pay twenty-five cents on the dollar, if given a little time. I shall not run away. I shall stay right here till all matters are honorably settled.
JAMES G. SANFORD
Lincoln hastily pinned this paper to the windowsash so that it could be seen from without, then pulled down the blinds and locked the door. His fun-loving nature rose superior to his rage for the moment. "There'll be the devil to pay in this burg before two hours."
He slipped out the back way, taking the keys with him. "I'll go and tell uncle, and then we'll see if Jim can't turn in the house on our account," he thought as he harnessed a team to drive out to McPhail's.
The first man to try the door was an old Norwegian in a spotted Mackinac jacket and a fur cap, with the inevitable little red tippet about his neck. He turned the knob, knocked, and at last saw the writing, which he could not read, and went away to tell Johnson that the bank was closed. Johnson thought nothing special of that; it was early, and they weren't very particular to open on time, anyway.
Then the barber across the street tried to get in to have a bill changed. Trying to peer in the window, he saw the notice, which he read with a grin.
"One o' Link's jobs," he explained to the fellows in the shop. "He's too darned lazy to open on time, so he puts up notice that the bank is busted."
"Let's go and see."
"Don't do it! He's watchin' to see us all rush across and look. Just keep quiet, and see the solid citizens rear around."
Old Orrin McIlvaine came out of the post office and tried the door next, then stood for a long time reading the notice, and at last walked thoughtfully away. Soon he returned, to the merriment of the fellows in the barbershop, with two or three solid citizens who had been smoking an after-breakfast cigar and planning a deer hunt. They stood before the window in a row and read the notice.
Mcllvaine gesticulated with his cigar.
"Gentlemen, there's a pig loose here."
"One o' Link's jokes, I reckon."
"But that's Sanford's writin'. An' here it is nine o'clock, and no one round. I don't like the looks of it, myself."
The crowd thickened; the fellows came out of the blacksmith shop, while the jokers in the barbershop smote their knees and yelled with merriment.
"What's up?" queried Vance, coming up and repeating the universal question.
McIlvaine pointed at the poster with his cigar.
Vance read the notice, while the crowd waited silently.
"What ye think of it?"asked someone impatiently. Vance smoked a moment. "Can't say. Where's Jim?"
"That's it! Where is he?"
"Best way to find out is to send a boy up to the house." He called a boy and sent him scurrying up the street.
The crowd now grew sober and discussed possibilities. "If that's true, it's the worst crack on the head I ever had," said Mcllvaine.
"Seventeen hundred dollars is my pile in there." He took a seat on the windowsill.
"Well, I'm tickled to death to think I got my little stake out before anything happened."
"When you think of it-what security did he ever give?" Mcllvaine continued.
"Not a cent-not a red cent."
