“Of course.”

The two men shook hands and went out in the hall.  Carroll went back to the den, and left Charlotte, who was shyly waiting to have the last words with her lover.  Pretty soon she came fluttering into the den.

“You do like him, don’t you, papa?” she asked, putting her arms around her father’s neck.

“Yes, dear.”

“But I am never going to leave you, papa, not for him nor anybody, not until Amy and the others come back.”

“You will never forget papa, anyway, will you, honey?” said Carroll, and his voice was piteous in spite of himself.

“Forget you, papa?  I guess not!” said Charlotte, “and I never will leave you.”

That was Thursday.  The next afternoon Mrs. Anderson came and called on Charlotte.  She was glad that Carroll was not at home.  She shrank very much from meeting him.  Carroll had not gone to New York, but had taken the trolley to New Sanderson.  He also went into several of the Banbridge stores.  The next Sunday morning, in the barber’s shop, several men exhibited notes of hand with Carroll’s signature.

“I don’t suppose it is worth the paper it is written on,” said Rosenstein, with his melancholy accent, frowning intellectually over the slip of paper.

“He gave the dressmaker one, too,” said Amidon, “and she is tickled to death with it.  The daughter had already asked her to take back a silk dress she had made for her, and she has sold it for something.  The dressmaker thinks the note is as good as money.”

“I’ve got one of the blasted things, too,” said the milkman, Tappan.

“It’s for forty dollars, and I’ll sell out for ten cents.”

“I’d be willing to make my davyalfit that Captain Carroll’s notes will be met when they are accentuated,” said the little barber, in a trembling voice of partisanship, looking up from the man he was shaving; and everybody laughed.

Lee, who was waiting his turn, spoke.  “Captain Carroll says he will pay me the price I paid for the United Fuel stock, in a year’s time,” he said, proudly.  “The stock has depreciated terribly, too.  A pretty square man, I call him.”

“He’s got more sides than you have, anyhow,” growled Tappan, who was bristling like a pirate with his week’s beard; and everybody laughed again, though they did not altogether know why.

However the recipients of Carroll’s notes doubted their soundness, they folded them carefully and put them in their pocketbooks.  When Carroll took the eight-o’clock train to New York the next morning, several noticed it and thought it looked well for the payment of the notes.

“Guess he’s goin’ to start another cheat,” said the milkman, who had stopped at the saloon opposite Rosenstein’s.  “I seed him git on the eight-ten train.”