"Sir," replied the teller, with severity, "you are encroaching upon our contract. I may speak of this affair, but you have no right to."
Then he turned to the board:
"Do you wish me to go back to my work?"
There was a consultation. Then the president said:
"If you will be so kind."
Fields complied.
The business of the day went forward as usual. The teller's counter-desk was supplied with money, and no suspicion was aroused among his fellows.
As each director went out of the bank, he stopped at Fields's window, and addressed some set remark to him upon business matters; and so intimate did the relations between them seem that the clerks concluded that the lucky man was about to be made cashier, and they began to pay him more respect.
In the intervening night there again recurred to the directors the enormity of the outrage to which they had been subjected. The incident of recovering so large a part of what they had originally supposed was gone had the effect of making them partially unmindful of the loss of the smaller sum which the teller finally agreed to accept in place of punishment. But in the lapse between the time of the robbery and the time of the promised restitution, their appreciation of their position had time to revive again, and when they assembled on the next morning to receive the money from Fields, they were anxious and feverish.
Would he come? Was he not at this moment in Canada? Would a man who could steal one hundred thousand dollars return a quarter of a million? Absurd!