Squire Hexter, escorting Xoa, took the trouble to step to the window and tap lightly with his cane.  He was hoping that the cashier would change his mind and go to the hall.  He waited after tapping but Vaniman did not appear at the window.  The Squire did not venture to tap again.  “He must be pretty well taken up with his work,” he suggested to Xoa when they were on their way.  “That’s where we get the saying, ‘Deaf as an adder.’”

Oblivious to all sounds, bent over his task, Vaniman gave to the exasperating puzzle all the concentration he could muster.

The play that evening at Town Hall dragged after the fashion of amateur shows.  The management of the sets and the properties consumed much time.  There were mishaps.  One of these accidents had to do with the most ambitious scene of the piece, a real brook—­the main feature of the final, grand tableau when folks were trying to keep awake at eleven o’clock.  The brook came babbling down over rocks and was conveyed off-stage by means of a V-shaped spout.  There was much merriment when the audience discovered that the brook could be heard running uphill behind the scenes; two hobble-de-hoy boys were dipping the water with pails from the washboiler at the end of the sluice and lugging it upstairs, where they dumped it into the brook’s fount.  The brook’s peripatetic qualities were emphasized when both boys fell off the top of the makeshift stairs and came down over the rocks, pails and all.  Then there was hilarity which fairly rocked the hall.

For some moments another sound—­a sound which did not harmonize with the laughter—­was disregarded by the audience.

All at once the folks realized that a man was squalling discordantly—­his shrieks almost as shrill as a frightened porker’s squeals.  Heads were snapped around.  Eyes saw Dorsey, the municipal watchman, almost the only man of the village of Egypt who was not of the evening’s audience in Town Hall.  He was standing on a settee at the extreme rear of the auditorium.  He was swinging his arms wildly; as wildly was he shouting.  He noted that he had secured their attention.

“How in damnation can you laugh” he screamed.  “The bank has been robbed and the cashier murdered!”

CHAPTER XIV

A BANK TURNED INSIDE OUT

When the skeow-wowed “brook” twisted the drama into an anticlimax of comicality, the players who were on the stage escaped the deluge by fleeing into the wings.

Vona had been waiting for her cue to join the hero and pledge their vows beside the babbling stream.  After one horrified gasp of amazement, she led off the hilarity back-stage.  Frank was in her mind at that moment, as he had been all the evening; her zestful enjoyment of the affair was heightened by the thought that she could help him forget his troubles for a little while by the story she would carry to him.  Then she and the others in the group heard the piercing squeals of a man’s voice.