t that he had been officially superseded, crouched face to
face, battering his opponent, Hardinge fought his way like a madman out
of the maelstrom and declared war on Coal and Ore. Voices blended into a
frenzied Walpurgian uproar. Frantic telephone calls made the blackboard
one flickering, wavering, confusing area of black and white where no
spot was white for any consecutive minute and no spot black.

For an hour it raged so, down!--down!--down!--with no moment of recovery
and no instant of changing tide. When now and again the din subsided for
a few moments of recovered breath, while traders "verified," faces
streaming sweat looked as haggard as though it was blood that was
pouring from them. Voices cracked with hoarseness as men stood panting
like dogs torn from the embrace of battle and waiting only for the leash
to loosen and free them again for renewed battle. Underfoot they trod
the confetti-like scraps of torn papers. Among them went the men with
green watering-pots. Outside newsboys called yet new extras. The market
had been open an hour and the Street was seeing the most delirious day
of mania in its history. Then in one of the lulls came that sound which
between the hours of ten and three is never heard save as the clarion of
disaster. The great gong in the president's gallery sent out its
strident and metallic voice, and in the dead silence that followed its
command an announcement was made.

"The Western Trust Company announces that it cannot meet its
obligations."

The weakest barrier had fallen, and it was only the beginning.

CHAPTER XXIII

When Mary Burton presented herself in the anteroom of the suite whose
ground-glass doors bore the legend "Edwardes and Edwardes," and asked
for the banker, a man with a pale and demoralized face gazed at her
blankly. Could any one seek to claim, except on most urgent business,
one minute out of these crucially vital hours? They were hours when the
real target of the whole panic-making bombardment was striving to
compress into each relentless instant a separate struggle for survival.

"I am Mary Burton," she said simply; and the man stood dubiously shaking
his head. His nerve-racked condition could only realize the name
Burton--and in these offices it was not just now a favored name.

As he stood, barring the way to an inner room marked "private," the door
opened and Jefferson Edwardes came hurriedly out. He looked as she had
never seen him look before,