“Do you know that man with the two policemen?  That is Mr. Gordon Keith.  Here is his balance; pay it to him as soon as he reaches the window.”

The teller, bending forward, gazed earnestly out of the small grated window over the heads of those nearest him.  Keith met his gaze, and the teller nodded.  Norman turned away without looking, and seated himself on a chair in the rear of the bank.

When Keith reached the window, the white-faced teller said immediately: 

“Your balance, Mr. Keith, is so much; you have a check?” He extended his hand to take it.

“No,” said Keith; “I have not come to draw out any money.  I have come to make a deposit.”

The teller was so much astonished that he simply ejaculated: 

“Sir—?”

“I wish to make a deposit,” said Keith, raising his voice a little, and speaking with great distinctness.

His voice had the quality of carrying, and a silence settled on the crowd,—­one of those silences that sometimes fall, even on a mob, when the wholly unexpected happens,—­so that every word that was spoken was heard distinctly.

“Ah—­we are not taking deposits to-day,” said the astonished teller, doubtfully.

Keith smiled.

“Well, I suppose there is no objection to doing so?  I have an account in this bank, and I wish to add to it.  I am not afraid of it.”

The teller gazed at him in blank amazement; he evidently thought that Keith was a little mad.  He opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing from sheer astonishment.

“I have confidence enough in this bank,” pursued Keith, “to put my money here, and here I propose to put it, and I am not the only one; there will be others here in a little while.”

“I shall—­really, I shall have to ask Mr. Wentworth,” faltered the clerk.

“Mr. Wentworth has nothing to do with it,” said Keith, positively, and to close the discussion, he lifted his satchel through the window, and, turning it upside down, emptied before the astonished teller a pile of bills which made him gasp.  “Enter that to my credit,” said Keith.

“How much is it?”

The sum that Keith mentioned made him gasp yet more.  It was up in the hundreds of thousands.

“There will be more here in a little while.”  He turned his head and glanced toward the door.  “Ah, here comes some one now,” he said, as he recognized one of the men whom he had recently left at the council board, who was then pushing his way forward, under the guidance of several policemen.

The amount deposited by the banker was much larger than Keith had expected, and a few well-timed words to those about him had a marked effect upon the depositors.  He said their apprehension was simply absurd.  They, of course, had the right to draw out their money, if they wished it, and they would get it, but he advised them to go home and wait to do so until the crowd dispersed.  The bank was perfectly sound, and they could not break it unless they could also break its friends.