s father's
investments in street-railways, which had risen with his own ventures,
and which now involved an additional two hundred thousand--how could he
protect those? The shares were hypothecated and the money was used
for other things. Additional collateral would have to be furnished the
several banks carrying them. It was nothing except loans, loans, loans,
and the need of protecting them. If he could only get an additional
deposit of two or three hundred thousand dollars from Stener. But that,
in the face of possible financial difficulties, was rank criminality.
All depended on the morrow.

Monday, the ninth, dawned gray and cheerless. He was up with the first
ray of light, shaved and dressed, and went over, under the gray-green
pergola, to his father's house. He was up, also, and stirring about, for
he had not been able to sleep. His gray eyebrows and gray hair looked
rather shaggy and disheveled, and his side-whiskers anything but
decorative. The old gentleman's eyes were tired, and his face was gray.
Cowperwood could see that he was worrying. He looked up from a small,
ornate escritoire of buhl, which Ellsworth had found somewhere, and
where he was quietly tabulating a list of his resources and liabilities.
Cowperwood winced. He hated to see his father worried, but he could not
help it. He had hoped sincerely, when they built their houses together,
that the days of worry for his father had gone forever.

"Counting up?" he asked, familiarly, with a smile. He wanted to hearten
the old gentleman as much as possible.

"I was just running over my affairs again to see where I stood in
case--" He looked quizzically at his son, and Frank smiled again.

"I wouldn't worry, father. I told you how I fixed it so that Butler and
that crowd will support the market. I have Rivers and Targool and Harry
Eltinge on 'change helping me sell out, and they are the best men there.
They'll handle the situation carefully. I couldn't trust Ed or Joe in
this case, for the moment they began to sell everybody would know what
was going on with me. This way my men will seem like bears hammering the
market, but not hammering too hard. I ought to be able to unload enough
at ten points off to raise five hundred thousand. The market may not go
lower than that. You can't tell. It isn't going to sink indefinitely.
If I just knew what the big insurance companies were going to do! The
morning paper hasn't come yet, has it?"

He was going to pull