Mary glanced up and looked at him steadily, but he didn’t return the look.  Presently she said: 

“I thought congratulations and praises always tasted good.  But—­it seems to me, now—­Edward?”

“Well?”

“Are you going to stay in the bank?”

“N—­no.”

“Resign?”

“In the morning—­by note.”

“It does seem best.”

Richards bowed his head in his hands and muttered: 

“Before I was not afraid to let oceans of people’s money pour through my hands, but—­Mary, I am so tired, so tired—­”

“We will go to bed.”

At nine in the morning the stranger called for the sack and took it to the hotel in a cab.  At ten Harkness had a talk with him privately.  The stranger asked for and got five cheques on a metropolitan bank—­drawn to “Bearer,”—­four for $1,500 each, and one for $34,000.  He put one of the former in his pocket-book, and the remainder, representing $38,500, he put in an envelope, and with these he added a note which he wrote after Harkness was gone.  At eleven he called at the Richards’ house and knocked.  Mrs. Richards peeped through the shutters, then went and received the envelope, and the stranger disappeared without a word.  She came back flushed and a little unsteady on her legs, and gasped out: 

“I am sure I recognised him!  Last night it seemed to me that maybe I had seen him somewhere before.”

“He is the man that brought the sack here?”

“I am almost sure of it.”

“Then he is the ostensible Stephenson too, and sold every important citizen in this town with his bogus secret.  Now if he has sent cheques instead of money, we are sold too, after we thought we had escaped.  I was beginning to feel fairly comfortable once more, after my night’s rest, but the look of that envelope makes me sick.  It isn’t fat enough; $8,500 in even the largest bank-notes makes more bulk than that.”

“Edward, why do you object to cheques?”

“Cheques signed by Stephenson!  I am resigned to take the $8,500 if it could come in bank-notes—­for it does seem that it was so ordered, Mary—­but I have never had much courage, and I have not the pluck to try to market a cheque signed with that disastrous name.  It would be a trap.  That man tried to catch me; we escaped somehow or other; and now he is trying a new way.  If it is cheques—­”

“Oh, Edward, it is too bad!” And she held up the cheques and began to cry.

“Put them in the fire! quick! we mustn’t be tempted.  It is a trick to make the world laugh at us, along with the rest, and—­Give them to me, since you can’t do it!” He snatched them and tried to hold his grip till he could get to the stove; but he was human, he was a cashier, and he stopped a moment to make sure of the signature.  Then he came near to fainting.

“Fan me, Mary, fan me!  They are the same as gold!”