in the bosoms of most members
of a really thriving community which often comes to the surface under
the most trying circumstances. These four men were by no means an
exception to this rule. Messrs. Schryhart, Hand, Arneel, and Merrill
were concerned as to the good name of Chicago and their united standing
in the eyes of Eastern financiers. It was a sad blow to them to think
that the one great enterprise they had recently engineered--a foil to
some of the immense affairs which had recently had their genesis in New
York and elsewhere--should have come to so untimely an end. Chicago
finance really should not be put to shame in this fashion if it could
be avoided. So that when Mr. Schryhart arrived, quite warm and
disturbed, and related in detail what he had just learned, his friends
listened to him with eager and wary ears.

It was now between five and six o'clock in the afternoon and still
blazing outside, though the walls of the buildings on the opposite side
of the street were a cool gray, picked out with pools of black shadow.
A newsboy's strident voice was heard here and there calling an extra,
mingled with the sound of homing feet and street-cars--Cowperwood's
street-cars.

"I'll tell you what it is," said Schryhart, finally. "It seems to me
we have stood just about enough of this man's beggarly interference.
I'll admit that neither Hull nor Stackpole had any right to go to him.
They laid themselves and us open to just such a trick as has been
worked in this case." Mr. Schryhart was righteously incisive, cold,
immaculate, waspish. "At the same time," he continued, "any other
moneyed man of equal standing with ourselves would have had the
courtesy to confer with us and give us, or at least our banks, an
opportunity for taking over these securities. He would have come to
our aid for Chicago's sake. He had no occasion for throwing these
stocks on the market, considering the state of things. He knows very
well what the effect of their failure will be. The whole city is
involved, but it's little he cares. Mr. Stackpole tells me that he had
an express understanding with him, or, rather, with the men who it is
plain have been representing him, that not a single share of this stock
was to be thrown on the market. As it is, I venture to say not a
single share of it is to be found anywhere in any of their safes. I can
sympathize to a certain extent with poor Stackpole. His position, of
course, was very trying. B