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 a.s.sisted 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!"

Frank threw up the window. "I'll make what's left over from my lunch do me, Squire. I'm tied up here with my work."

"I'll allow the new Starr in our local sky to keep you away from euchre," the Squire grumbled, "but I swanny if I'll let your interest in astronomy, all of a sudden, keep you away from the hot vittles you need.

You come along with me to the house."

"Squire, I can't lock the vault yet awhile. I don't want to leave things as they are. I must not."

Vona had come to his side, she understood the nature of his anxiety. "I am just starting for my house, Squire Hexter. I'm going to hurry back with Frank's supper, so that he won't be bothered."

"Bless your soul, sis, even Xoa will be perfectly satisfied with that arrangement when I explain," said the Squire, gallantly. "I'm tempted to stay, myself, if Hebe is going to serve." He backed away and did a grand salaam, flourishing the cane whose taps on the window had startled the lovers.

"You must not take the time, Vona," protested the young man.

"I'll bring the supper when I'm on my way to the hall. Not another word!

If I'm to lose the best part of my audience from the hall to-night, I can, at least, have that best part give me a compliment on my new gown--and give me," she went on, rea.s.suring him by a brave little smile, "a whole lot of courage by a dear kiss."

She hurried away.

He was hard at work when she returned, carrying a wicker basket.

Again he protested because she was taking so much trouble, but she laid aside her coat and insisted on arranging the food on a corner of the table, a happy flush on her cheeks, giving him thanks with her eyes when he praised her gown.

"I'm going to look in on you after the show," she declared. "Father will come with me."

Vona remained with him until the wall clock warned her.

She asked him to wait a moment when he brought her wraps. She stood before him in her gay garb, wistfully appealing. "Frank, I was intending to have a little play of my own with you at the hall to-night. I was going to look right past that Durgin boy, straight down into your eyes, when I came to a certain place in the play. I was intending to let the folks of Egypt know something, providing they all don't know it by now.

This is what I have to say, and now I'm saying it to the only audience I care for:

"'Twere vain to tell thee all I feel, Or say for thee I'd die.

Ah, well-a-day, the sweetest melody Could never, never say one half my love for thee."

Then, after a moment, she escaped from his ardent embrace.

"Remember that, dearest," she called from the doorway.

"I'll remember it every time I start with a line of figures, you blessed girl. And then how my pencil will go dancing up the column!"

After she had gone he pulled the curtain cords, raising the curtains so that they covered the lower sashes; he did not care to be seen at his work by the folks who were on their way to the hall.

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 munic.i.p.al 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 d.a.m.nation 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.

"Somebody has got hystierucks out of it, and I don't blame him," stated the manager of the show. He grabbed the handle of the winch and began to let down the curtain. "I reckon the only sensible thing to do is to let Brook Number One and Brook Number Two take the curtain call."

Then Dorsey's shrill insistence prevailed over the roars of laughter in front; the young folks on the stage heard his bloodcurdling bulletin.

The manager let slip the whirling handle and the pole of the hurrying curtain thumped the platform. Vona had leaped, risking her life, and was able to dodge under the descending pole. For a moment, sick with horror and unutterable woe, she stood there alone against the tawdry curtain, as wide-eyed and white-faced as Tragedy's muse.

Men, women, and children, all the folks of Egypt, were struggling to their feet; the sliding settees squawked and clattered.

She saw Tasper Britt, fighting a path for himself, Starr following.