Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/309

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body, Rollie took the minister's key and strolled in the most casual manner he could command down to the vault room.

"Doctor Hampstead's box," he announced, exhibiting his key. The vault clerk turned to his card index as a mere matter of form, for he remembered well enough Rollie's authorization, and read upon the card of the Reverend John Hampstead his signed permission for Rollo Charles Burbeck to do with his box "as I might or could do if personally present." The clerk stepped inside the vault, scanned the numbers and tiers, and thrust his master-key into the proper lock. Rollie slipped the minister's key into its own place, turned it, and the door flew open. The vault clerk returned to his stand outside the door. Rollie took the box and walked into one of the private rooms provided for the safe deposit patrons. In a moment he was ripping open the envelope marked "Wadham Currency", which he found exactly as the minister had described it.

At sight and feeling of the money in his fingers, a great wave of hope surged over Rollie. It was a solid assurance of escape. With this assurance, there came to the young man a sharp, definite impulse to begin at once the work of character building. As an initial step, he wrote upon one of his personal cards: "I. O. U. $1,100," and signed it, not with his initials, but boldly in vigorous chirography, to express the stoutness of his purpose, with the whole of his name, "Rollo Charles Burbeck." When putting this card carefully back in the envelope from which he had extracted the currency, and placing the envelope on the top of the papers in the box, the young man experienced a fine glow of satisfaction. He had done a good and honorable act in this bold assumption of his debt and in thus leaving the written record there behind him.