man ever had. Jim, forget it all. I was mad, I am mad, I
have been mad for a long time, but it cannot last much longer. I know it
can't, and, Jim, by all our past love, by the memories of the dear old
days at St. Paul's and at Harvard, the dear old days of hope and
happiness, when we planned for the future, try to think of me only as you
knew me then, as you know that I should now be, but for the 'System's'
curse."

The clerks were pounding on the door; through the glass showed many forms.
They had been gathering for minutes while Bob talked in his low, sad tone,
a tone that no one could believe came from the same mouth that a few
moments before had poured forth a flood of brutal heartlessness.

Bob went to the door. The office was in an uproar. Twenty or thirty of
Bob's brokers were there, aghast at not getting a reply to their calls.
Many more were pouring in through the outer office. Bob looked at them
coldly. "Well, what is the trouble? Is it possible we are down to a point
where the Stock Exchange rushes over to a man's office when his wire
happens to break down?"

They saw his bluff. You cannot deceive Stock Exchange men, at least not
the kind that Bob Brownley employed on panic days, but his coolness
reassured them, and when they saw me it was odds-on that they guessed to a
man why Bob had ignored his wires--guessed that I had been pleading for
the life of "the Street."

"Well, where do you stand?"

Frank Swan answered for the crowd: "The panic is in full swing. She's a
cellar-to-ridge-pole ripper. They're down 40 or over on an average.
Anti-People's is down to 35, and still coming like sawdust over a broken
dam. Barry Conant's house and a dozen other of Reinhart's have gone under.
His banks and trust companies are going every minute. The whole Street
will be overboard before the close. The governing committee has just
called a meeting to see whether it will not be best to adjourn the
Exchange over to-day and to-morrow."

Bob listened as if he had been a master at the wheel in a gale, receiving
reports from his mates.

There was no trace now of the scene he had just been through. He was cool,
masterful, like the seasoned sea-dog who knows that in spite of the
ocean's rage and the wind's howl, the wheel will answer his hand and the
craft its rudder. "Jim, come over to the Exchange." The crowd followed
along. "We have but a minute and I want to have you say you forgive me,"
he said to me. "I know, Jim, you