accepted the charge. For his legacies in life had been chiefly blessings
in disguise. He was paying teller of the Prairie Bank, and the
thermometer registered something above 90 deg. Fahrenheit on the July
morning when he stood behind his wicket reading a letter from Howard
Allison, Esquire, relative to his niece. Mr. Leffingwell was at this
period of his life forty-eight, but the habit he had acquired of assuming
responsibilities and burdens seemed to have had the effect of making his
age indefinite. He was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, his mustache and
hair already turning; his eyebrows were a trifle bushy, and his eyes
reminded men of one eternal and highly prized quality--honesty. They were
blue grey. Ordinarily they shed a light which sent people away from his
window the happier without knowing why; but they had been known, on rare
occasions, to flash on dishonesty and fraud like the lightnings of the
Lord. Mr. Isham, the president of the bank, coined a phrase about him. He
said that Thomas Leffingwell was constitutionally honest.

Although he had not risen above the position of paying teller, Thomas
Leffingwell had a unique place in the city of his birth; and the esteem
in which he was held by capitalists and clerks proves that character
counts for something. On his father's failure and death he had entered
the Prairie Bank, at eighteen, and never left it. If he had owned it, he
could not have been treated by the customers with more respect. The city,
save for a few notable exceptions, like Mr. Isham, called him Mr.
Leffingwell, but behind his back often spoke of him as Tom.

On the particular hot morning in question, as he stood in his seersucker
coat reading the unquestionably pompous letter of Mr. Allison announcing
that his niece was on the high seas, he returned the greetings of his
friends with his usual kindness and cheer. In an adjoining compartment a
long-legged boy of fourteen was busily stamping letters.