Silas Wadham, mine-owner; William Hayes, merchant, and E. H. Wilson, capitalist, subscribed to Hampstead's bond. Each was a big man in his way; each had unbounded faith in the integrity and good sense of the minister. They were not men to be swept off their feet by mere surface currents. They laughed a little and rallied John upon his plight, yet he knew somehow by the bend of the jaw when they dipped their pens in ink and with clamped lips subscribed their signatures, that these men were his unshakably.
One circumstance might have seemed strange. None of them were members of All People's. Yet this was not because there were not men in All People's who would have qualified as unhesitatingly; but because John had a feeling that he was being assailed as a community character rather than as a clerical one.
Within ten minutes the formalities in Judge Brennan's chamber were concluded, Hampstead was free, but as he turned to Searle waiting suavely, backed by the suggestive presence of the two detectives, there came suddenly into his mind the memory that Rollie Burbeck's I. O. U. for eleven hundred dollars was in his safe deposit box in the envelope marked "Wadham Currency." This was a chaos-producing thought. If Searle once got an eye on that card, it would start innumerable trains of suspicion, each of which must center on the young bank cashier. In his present state, that boy was too weak to resist pres-
