He saw his duty in the matter, but as the golden flood rose higher in the bins, and as hour after hour rolled by bringing him nearer and nearer to the time when Molly Culpepper should marry Adrian Brownwell, a temptation came to him, and he dallied with it as he sat figuring at his desk.

The bank was a husk.

Its real resources had been sold, and a lot of bogus notes--accommodation paper, they called it--had taken the place of real assets.

For Hendricks to borrow money of any other institution as the officer of the Exchange National Bank of Sycamore Ridge would be a crime.

And yet he knew that ten thousand dollars would save her, and his brain was wrought with a madness.