Hervey Willetts by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

No one was there. Hervey looked out upon the dissolving night; already the familiar scene was emerging in the gray drawn -- the white rail fence, the gravel walk with its bordering whitewashed stones, the big whitewashed tub that caught the rain-water from the roof trough. He smelled the mist. There was no one anywhere about; no sound but the slow dripping into the tub. Drop, drop, drop; it was from the rain of two or three days ago. How audible it was in the stillness! He crept upstairs again and went to bed. But he did not sleep. He wished that dreadful satchel were off his hands. Over a hundred dollars!

He arose in the morning before the household was astir and stole out with his guilty burden. He knew that Kipp's Railroad Lunch was open all night and that it had a telephone. He would look in the telephone book for Manners. That way he would find the address. He thought of leaving the satchel at the Manners' door, ringing the bell, and running away. The recovery of the money would end the trouble. But suppose the satchel should be stolen again -- not _again_; but suppose it should be stolen? Of course, it had not been stolen before. Just the same he was desperate to get it off his hands.