"Where's his wife?" another anxious-faced business man inquired, pushing forward.
"She left for Kansas City yesterday afternoon."
"Oh, well, Stott's around town somewhere, then," said the grocer. "Come on, we've got to find him."
A general alarm for Stott went through the town, on the heels of the news that the bank had been robbed, and everything down to the last security carried off. The marshal held his place in the door, and would not allow anybody to enter until it became a determined fact that Stott was gone.
Then the directors took possession of the concern, to find that the president's hand, and no other, had cleaned it to the crumbs. There was no doubt about that; he had left his mark behind him in a hundred ways. He had left nothing but a heap of silver representing a few hundred dollars, too heavy and unprofitable to carry away.
Hartwell turned away from the sullen crowd that waited the final announcement of the bank's directors, feeling the defalcation and flight of the banker as keenly as any man whose all was on deposit there. Stott had robbed them only of their money, and a man could replace that if he lived long enough, and denied himself, and good fortune kept its hand over him; but a man who had been robbed of his main chance of saving his honor had been left bankrupt beyond repair.
