Cleveland County herald., 1918-04-25
CHAPTER XIX.
 In the Dead of Niuht,

While Kusiak slept that night the wind shifted. It came roaring across the range and drove before 1t great scudding clouds heavily laden with sleety snow. From dark till dawn the roar of the wind filled the night. Be fore morning heavy drifts had wiped out the roads and sheeted the town in virgin white unbroken by trails or fur rows.
 With the coming of daylight the tempest abated. Kusiak got into it's working clothes and dug itself out from the heavy blanket of white that had tucked it in. By noon the busi- ness of the town was under way again. That which would have demoralized the activities of Southern city made little difference to these Arctic Circle dwellers. Roads were cleared, paths shOveled, stores opened. Children in parkas and fur coats trooped to school and studied through the short after noon by the aid of electric light.
 Dusk fell early and with 1t came a scatter of more snow. Mrs. Selfridge gave a dinner-dance at the club that night and her guests came in furs of great variety and much value. The hostess outdid herself to make the af- fair the most elaborate of the season. Nobody in Kusiak of any social im- portance was omitted from the list of invited except Gordon Elliot. Even the grumpy old cashier of Macdonald's bank-an old bachelor who lived by himself in rooms behind those in which the banking was done-was persuaded to break his custom and appear in a rusty old dress suit of the vintage of | '95.
 The grizzled cashier-his name was Robert Milton-left the clubhouse early for his rooms. It was showing, but the wind had died down. Contrary to his custom, he had taken two or three glasses of wine. His brain was excited so that he knew he could not sleep. He decided to read "Don Quixote" by the stove for an hour or two.
 Arrived at the bank, he let himself
 
 stopped to open the draft of the stove when a sound stopped him halfway. The cashier stood rigid, still crouched, waiting for a repetition of the noise. It came once more-the low, dull rasp- ing of a file.
 Shivers ran down the spine of Mill ton and up the back of his head to the roots of his hair. Somebody was in the bank-at two o'clock in the morning-with tools for burglary. He was a scholarly old fellow, brought up in New England and cast out to the uttermost frontier by the malign trag- edy of poverty. Adventure offered no appeal to him.
 But though his knees trembled be- heath him and the sickness of fear was gripping his heart, Robert Mil ton had in him the dynamic spark that makes man. He tiptoed to his desk and with shaking fingers gripped the revolver that lay in drawer.
 The cashier braced himself for the plunge, then slowly trod across the room to the inner, locked door. The palsied fingers of his left hand could scarce turn the key.
 It seemed to him that the night was alive with the noise he made in turning the lock and opening the door. The hinges grated and the floor squeaked beneath the fall of his foot as he stood at the threshold.
 Two men were in front of the wire grating which protected the big safe that filled the alcove to the right. One held file and the other a candle. Their blank, masked faces were turned toward Milton, and each of them cov- cred him with a weapon.
 "W-what are you doing here?" quavered the cashier.
 Drop that gun," came the low, sharp command from one of them.
 Some old ancestral instinct in the bank cashier rose out of his panic to destroy him. He wanted to lie down quietly in a faint But his mind as- serted its mastery over the weakrng