“Where is he? Where’s Grey? Call him up. We want to know what he has to say for himself,” was heard on every side, while two or three rushed to a store near by, where there was a telephone, each trying to reach it first.
“Leave it to me,” the cashier said, and the Central was rung up and “Grey at his house” called for, while “Halloo!” soon came in response, in Louie’s voice.
“I want your father,” the cashier screamed in his excitement, and Louie replied:
“He is not here. We don’t know where he is. What is the matter?”
“The bank is closed—failed! Where can he be?” was shouted, but Louie didn’t answer.
She had dropped insensible upon the floor, where the housemaid found her a few minutes later. Her mother had missed her father, and was making inquiries for him when the message came through the ‘phone, bringing alarm and dismay and an insight into some things which had seemed strange of late.
It did not take long to restore Louie to consciousness, and in a few minutes she was on her wheel, speeding away to the bank, where she felt her father was.
On her way she passed the White House, and glanced towards it with a thought of Herbert, and what he would say and do, and with a thought, too, of Fred Lansing on the ocean that summer day, with no suspicion of what was transpiring in Merivale. This she did not know, as she had not heard what the judge said to Herbert when he gave him Fred’s letter the day before.
The village was thoroughly roused by this time, and the country, too. No one could tell who carried it, but the news had reached Godfrey Sheldon, as he was washing himself in a tin basin by the well, and thinking what a hot day it was going to be for him to drive to an adjoining town to pay for some oxen and a Jersey cow, the money for which he must get from Grey’s Bank. To say that he swore is putting it mildly, and between his swearing and excitement he emptied the tin basin into the well and finished his ablutions in the pail of water drawn for the house. He called himself a fool for leaving so much in the bank as he ran his horse into town, hoping against hope, and finding that the worst had happened when he saw the notice on the door and the crowd in the street.
“Heavens and earth!” he exclaimed, clutching first one and then another. “How much do you s’pose he’ll pay on the dollar? or be we tee-totally swamped?”