It had been a long week, and he was tired. Still, the man stuck to his routine.

Most Fridays, late afternoon, he swings by his bank to cash a check, then stops for groceries before heading home.

Last Friday, he was at the bank, in one of the drive-up lanes off Old Sauk Road, about 4 p.m.

He cashed a check for $600. The teller sent it out in an envelope. The man put $70 in his money clip and left the remaining cash in the envelope.

Fifteen minutes later, he was in the parking lot of his neighborhood grocery store. Before locking his car and going in, the man checked under the passenger seat floor mat, where he always puts the cash envelope after stopping at the bank.

The envelope wasn't there.

It had to be there, but it wasn't.

He didn't panic, not yet. He thought, "I must have put it in my pocket." He slapped all his pockets. Nothing.

He checked under the mat again. It wasn't there.

Now he realized what he must have done. He must have taken $70 out of the envelope, and then put the envelope - containing $530 in cash - back in the drive-up container.

He had a sick feeling in his stomach.

He reached for his cell phone and called the bank. He explained what he thought had happened. The woman who answered the phone said, "Oh, my." Then she said she would try to connect him with the drive-up teller.

The man's mind was racing. How many customers would have driven through that lane in the 15 minutes since he'd been there?

It dawned on him that it all hinged on the first customer. He or she would reach for the container, and find the envelope. Then would come the moment of truth. Would he alert the teller, or would he pocket the $530 and drive away?

The man reasoned that his karma in this area should be pretty good. He was honest. When a cashier made a mistake in his favor, he always pointed it out.

Then he thought, "Except for that time in Key West."

It was decades ago, and he was just out of college, spending a summer in the Florida Keys. He had walked into the bar of the Casa Marina Hotel and spotted a $100 bill on the floor. The bar was empty, and even the bartender had momentarily stepped away.

He reasoned that if he gave the bill to the bartender, it would go right in his pocket. So the man kept it, and was so nervous about having such a big bill that he walked to a bank and exchanged it for five $20 bills.

Now the man recalled the property manager of the Madison Police Department telling him a story a few years ago about a retired Madison police detective finding an envelope containing 21 $100 bills in a bank parking lot.

The retired detective turned it into the police, and the police ran an ad in the Madison newspapers saying $1,500 had been lost and asking the owner to call and describe how and where it was lost.

Eventually one caller identified the time and place, and then added: "Except the finder must have already claimed a reward. There was $2,100 in the envelope."

The caller - a small businessman who wanted to give each of his employees a $100 Christmas bonus - got the money back. The retired detective even refused a reward.

On Friday, the drive-up teller finally came on the line. The man explained what he thought he had done. The teller was silent for a moment. Then she said, "I don't think anyone has been through that lane since you were here. Let me run out and check. Can you hold?"

"I can hold," the man said.

It was just a couple of minutes, but it seemed like forever.

"I have it," she said, when she came back on the line. The amount was correct. "Will you be coming back for it this afternoon?"

The man said he would. Driving back to the bank, he thought of a friend of his who has a mantra to live by: "Pay attention, and get along."

The man thought, "I need to work on paying attention."

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