“Both of us must.”

“It’s time for you to be going home.”

“I’m going to stay here.”

“But, dear girl, there’s the play!  You have the leading part!”

“The words will stick in my throat and tears will blind me when I think of you working here alone.  Frank, I insist!  I will not leave you.  They must postpone the play.”

He went to her and laid her hands, one upon the other, between his caressing palms.  “The folks will be there—­they are expecting the play—­you must not disappoint them.  It’s as much your duty to go to the hall as it is mine to stay here with the books.  And another thing!  Think of the stories that will be set going, with the bank examiner here, if it’s given out that the play had to be postponed because you couldn’t leave the books.  Such a report might start a run on the bank.  Folks would be sure to think there’s trouble here.  You must go, Vona.  It’s for the sake of both of us.”

He went and brought her coat and hat.

“I can’t go through with the play,” she wailed.

“We’ve got to use all the grit that’s in us—­whatever it is we’re up against.  Come!  Hold out your arms!” He assisted her with the coat.

He drew her toward the door with his arm about her.  “We’ll make a good long day of it to-morrow—­a holiday.  George Washington never told a lie.  Perhaps those books will come to themselves in the morning and realize what day it is and will stop lying!  Now be brave!”

The kiss he gave her was long and tender; she clung to him.  He released her, but she turned in the corridor and hurried back to him.  “I shouldn’t feel as I do—­worried sick about you, Frank!  The books must come out right, because both of us have been careful and honest.”

“Exactly!  The thing will prove itself in the end.  The money in that vault will talk for us!  I’ll do a little talking, myself, when—­But no matter now!”

“You have suspicions!  I know you have!”

“Naturally, not believing as much in ghosts or demons as I may have intimated to Starr.”

She looked apprehensively over her shoulder into the dark corners of the corridor.  Then she drew his face down close to hers.  “And it’s hard to believe in the reformation of demons,” she whispered.

“I’m doing a whole lot of thinking, little girl.  But I don’t want to talk now.  Do your best at the play.  Hide your troubles behind smiles—­that’s real fighting!  And we’ll see what to-morrow will do for us.”

“Yes, to-morrow!” She ran away, but again she returned.  “And nothing can happen to you here, in a quiet town like this, can it, Frank?” she asked.

“Nothing but what can be taken care of with that shotgun in the back room!  But don’t look frightened, precious girl!  There’s nothing—­”

But even Vaniman was startled, the next moment.  The girl leaped into his embrace and cowered.  Something was clattering against a window of the bank.  But only the mild face of Squire Hexter was framed in the lamplight cast on the window.  He called, when he got a peep at the cashier, who came hastening back inside the grille:  “Supper, boy!  Supper!  Come along!”