Archibald McBride had chosen to disregard a holiday which his
fellow-merchants had so very generally observed.

"And him, I may say, just rotten rich!" he thought.

Mr. Shrimplin further discovered that though the lamps were lit they
were burning low, and he concluded that they had been lighted in the
early dusk of the winter afternoon and that McBride, for reasons of
economy, had deferred turning them up until it should be quite dark.

"Well, I'm a poor man, but I couldn't think of them things like he
does!" reflected Mr. Shrimplin; and then even before he had ceased to
pride himself on his superior liberality, he made still another
discovery, and this, that the store door stood wide open to the night.

"Well," thought Mr. Shrimplin, "maybe he's saving oil, but he's wasting
fuel."

Approaching the door he peered in. The store was empty, Archibald
McBride was nowhere visible. Evidently the door had been open some
little time, for he could see where the snow, driven by the strong wind,
had formed a miniature snow-drift just beyond the threshold.

"Either he's stepped out and the door's blowed open," muttered Mr.
Shrimplin, "or he's in his back office and some customer went out
without latching it."

He paused irresolutely, then he put his hand on the knob of the door to
close it, and paused again. With his taste for fictitious horrors,
usually indulged in, however, by his own warm fireside, he found the