CHAPTER NINE.
RUN TO EARTH.
Sub-Chapter I.
ON THE TRAIL.
Michael McCrane had bolted! There was not a shadow of a doubt about it.

The moment I reached the bank that eventful morning and saw the manager's desk open, and the tin cash-box lying empty on the floor, I said at once to myself, "This is McCrane's doing." And as I and the messenger stood there, with dropped jaws, gaping at the dismal scene, I hurriedly called up in my mind the incidents of the past week, and, reading them in the light of this discovery, I was ready to stake my reputation as a paying cashier that my fellow-clerk was a robber and a fugitive.
McCrane had not been at our bank long; he had come to us from one of the country branches, and, much to the disgust of some of us juniors, had been placed over our heads as second paying cashier.

I was third paying cashier, and from the moment I set eyes on my new colleague and superior I felt that mischief was in the wind.
A mysterious, silent man of twenty-six was Michael McCrane; so silent was he, indeed, that were it not for an occasional "How will you take it ?" "Not endorsed." "Next desk," ejaculated in the course of his daily duties, any one might have supposed him dumb.

He held himself gloomily aloof from his fellow- clerks.

None of us knew where he lived, or how he lived.