There are individuals in every community, too, who are bold enough to mention a delicate topic even to those most sensitively concerned, and as old Walton was going to the bank on the morning in question Bailey Thornton, a man of great size, who kept a grocery where the banker bought his supplies, essayed a jest as he passed the old man's morning cigar to him over the showcase. The bystanders thoroughly understood what was meant, as was evinced by the hearty laugh which went round, but the old man didn't.
“Don't be hard on the boy, Mr. Walton,” Thornton added, and he smiled broadly enough to explain any ordinary innuendo. “Remember your own young days. I'll bet Fred came by it honestly. The whole town knows the truth; there is no good in trying to hide it. Tell him it is all right, and make him come back home.”
Old Simon grunted and walked on, flushing under the irritating chorus of laughter which followed him out of the store. “Come by it honestly!” he repeated. “What could the meddling fool mean? _The whole town knows the truth!_”
He fell to quivering, and almost came to a dead halt in the street. Surely the circumstance of the bank's loss was not leaking out, after all his caution? He decided that he would at once sound Toby Lassiter. Perhaps Fred had confided in others. The bare chance of the shortage being known and used against him by the rival bank alarmed him. In fancy he saw the report growing and spreading through the town and country till an army of half-crazed depositors, egged on by his enemies, was clamoring at the door, and demanding funds which had been put out on collateral security, and could not be drawn in at a moment's notice.
As he was passing along the corridor by the counting-room, where, beyond the green wire grating, the bookkeepers were at work, he caught Lassiter's glance, and with a wild glare in his eyes he nodded peremptorily toward the rear. He had just hung up his old slouch hat and seated himself in his chair when the clerk joined him, a look of wonder in his mild eyes.
“Say, Toby, sit down--no, shut the door!” Simon ordered; and when the clerk had obeyed and taken a chair near the desk, the banker leaned toward him.
“I want to know,” he panted, “if the report is out about Fred's shortage?”