JIMMY.


On the Monday night after Jimmy wrote this letter, Ben Price jogged
unobtrusively into Elmore in a livery buggy. He lounged about town
in his quiet way until he found out what he wanted to know. From the
drug-store across the street from Spencer's shoe-store he got a good
look at Ralph D. Spencer.

"Going to marry the banker's daughter are you, Jimmy?" said Ben to
himself, softly. "Well, I don't know!"

The next morning Jimmy took breakfast at the Adamses. He was going
to Little Rock that day to order his wedding-suit and buy something
nice for Annabel. That would be the first time he had left town
since he came to Elmore. It had been more than a year now since
those last professional "jobs," and he thought he could safely
venture out.

After breakfast quite a family party went downtown together--Mr.
Adams, Annabel, Jimmy, and Annabel's married sister with her two
little girls, aged five and nine. They came by the hotel where Jimmy
still boarded, and he ran up to his room and brought along his
suit-case. Then they went on to the bank. There stood Jimmy's horse
and buggy and Dolph Gibson, who was going to drive him over to the
railroad station.

All went inside the high, carved oak railings into the
banking-room--Jimmy included, for Mr. Adams's future son-in-law