"Tumbling down?"

Wannop smiled. "I might have said being clubbed down."

"I want to get the thing quite straight," said Stirling. "What made
you take up this mine?"

"Mr. Weston's representations. I think I attached as much weight to
them as I did to the specimens. I felt that was a man that I could put
my money on."

"You feel that now?"

"I do," Wannop admitted. "In fact, it's hard to believe he will be
beaten, though the rest of us are going back on him."

Stirling nodded in a manner which might have meant anything.

"So your stock is being sold down?" he said. "As I pointed out to Mr.
Weston, considering that you haven't a great deal of it, that's rather
a dangerous game. Are any actual holders parting?"

They had spoken without reticence, in terse, sharp sentences, as men
who recognized the advisability of coming straight to the point, which
is, after all, a custom that usually saves trouble for everybody
concerned. The men who shrink from candor, lest they should give
themselves away, not infrequently waste a good deal of time wondering
what the other person means, and then decide incorrectly.

"They are," said Wannop. "Besides several small lots, one parcel of
six hundred shares held in England changed hands, though that was when
we stood near par and the stock was only beginning to break away. What
we want is such a strike of ore as will startle mining investors."

"Anything else?" Stirling asked suggestively.

"Well," said Wannop, "we're not likely to get it. If a good strong
buyer, who could wait, were to take hold, it would help us as much as
anything."

"Quite sure?" asked Stirling very dryly.

"Isn't it evident? It would stiffen prices and scare off the Hogarth
brokers. What's more, it would steady my colleagues' nerves."

"Yes," admitted Stirling, "it would do all that. However, I want to
suggest that that isn't quite enough. Anyway, that's my view of it."

They looked at each other steadily for a moment or two, and then
Stirling made a little forceful gesture.

"Now," he said, "I'm going to take hold of this thing; and in the
first place I'll give you an order on my bank for all the money that
seems necessary. You will take up some of that stock for me; and, as
the Hogarth men will offer more freely as soon as they strike an
actual buyer, in case prices stiffen you'll follow their lead and
pitch the stock you bought on to the market."

"Some men would consider that was playing the