The grizzled cashier--his name was Robert Milton--left the clubhouse
early for his rooms. It was snowing, but the wind had died down.
Contrary to his custom, he had taken two or three glasses of wine. His
brain was excited so that he knew he could not sleep. He decided to read
"Don Quixote" by the stove for an hour or two. The heat and the reading
together would make him drowsy.
Arrived at the bank, he let himself into his rooms and locked the
door. He stooped to open the draft of the stove when a sound stopped
him halfway. The cashier stood rigid, still crouched, waiting for a
repetition of the noise. It came once more--the low, dull rasping of
a file.
Shivers ran down the spine of Milton and up the back of his head to
the roots of his hair. Somebody was in the bank--at two o'clock in the
morning--with tools for burglary. He was a scholarly old fellow, brought
up in New England and cast out to the uttermost frontier by the malign
tragedy of poverty. Adventure offered no appeal to him. His soul quaked
as he waited with slack, feeble muscles upon the discovery that only a
locked door stood between him and violent ruffians.
But though his knees trembled beneath him and the sickness of fear was
gripping his heart, Robert Milton had in him the dynamic spark that
makes a man.
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