amount punched on it with a check punch," she observed as she ran
her quick eye over it while he explained his plan. "We'll have to
fill up some of those holes made by the punch."

"I know the kind they used," he answered. "I'll get one and a desk
check from the Gorham. You do the artistic work, my dear. My
knowledge of check punches, watermarks, and paper will furnish the
rest. I'll be back directly. Don't forget to call up the office a
little before the time I usually arrive there and tell them I am
ill."

With her light-fingered touch she worked feverishly, partly with the
liquid ink eradicator, but mostly with the spun-glass eraser. First
she rubbed out the cents after the written figure "Twenty-five."
Carefully with a blunt instrument she smoothed down the roughened
surface of the paper so that the ink would not run in the fibers and
blot. Over and over she practised writing the "Thousand" in a hand
like that on the check. She already had the capital "T" in "Twenty"
as a guide. During the night in practising she had found that in
raising checks only seven capital letters were used--O in one, T in
two, three, ten, and thousand, F in four and five, S in six and
seven, E in eight, N in nine and H in hundred.

At last even her practice satisfied her. Then with a coolness born
only of desperation she wrote in the words, "Thousand 00/100." When
she had done it she stopped to wonder at herself. She was amazed and
perhaps a little frightened at how readily she adapted herself to
the crime of forgery. She did not know that it was one of the few
crimes in which women had proved themselves most proficient, though
she felt her own proficiency and native ability for copying.