After dinner Wood went out bare-headed, and leaned on the fence by the captain. His wife stood just inside the door, looking out at them.
The “bank case” was the great sensation of the town, and Wood was one of the main witnesses, for he had been taking the place of the absent cashier when the safe was broken open and rifled, to the widespread distress of depositors and stock-holders and the ruin of Hon. Edward Clark, the president. Wood had locked the safe on the afternoon before the eventful night, and had carried home the key with him, and he was to testify to the contents of the safe as he had left it.
“I guess they’re glad they’ve got such a witness as John,” said his wife to herself, as she looked at him fondly, “and I guess they think there won’t be much doubt about what he says.”
“Well, Captain,” said Wood, jocosely, breaking a spear of grass to bits in his fingers, “I didn’t know but you’d come to arrest me.”
The captain calmly smiled as only a man can smile who has been accosted with the same humorous remark a dozen times a day for twenty years. He folded his paper carefully, put it in his pocket, took off his spectacles and put them in their silver case, took a red silk handkerchief from his hat, wiped his face, and put the handkerchief back. Then he said, shortly:
“That’s what I have come for.”
Wood, still leaning on the fence, looked at him, and said nothing.
“That’s just what I’ve come for,” said Captain Nourse. “I’ve got to arrest you; here’s the warrant.” And he handed it to him.
“What does this mean?” said Wood. “I can’t make head nor tail of this.”