ed to crumple in the office chair.

Abe Tutts to whom he owed $2500 for hay and grain waved a genial hand as
he passed the door.

"How goes it?" he called.

"Great!" and the boastful reply sickened him.

_Great_--when he was ruined!

It was the sentence "Something wrong" which gave Symes that weak feeling
in his knees. To what did Mudge refer, to the stock and bondholders or
to the project and himself? Must he go about for the four days which
must intervene before a letter could reach him with that sinking
sensation in the pit of his stomach, that curious limpness of his spine?

He lived through it somehow without betraying himself and when Mudge's
letter came it read in part:

"Your theory regarding the extraction of funds from stockholders is all
right only it don't work. When I called a meeting and suggested that
they raise more money among themselves to relieve the present situation
and protect their interests, they cut me off at the pockets.

"That Fly-trap King of yours said, 'If that's all you got us together
for, Mudge, we might as well get to hell out of here because I, for one,
don't propose to put another cent into the proposition--"My Wife Won't
Let Me."'

"The air was so chilly I could see my own breath and my last winter's
chilblains began to hurt.

"'Gentlemen,' I said, 'I don't understand your attitude in this matter.
We've got to raise this money to save ourselves. The proposition is as
good as it ever was.'

"'We don't doubt that,' says Prescott in that infernally quiet way of
his that makes your ears tingle, and a grin like a slice of watermelon
went round.

"I tell you, Symes, something or somebody has queered us here and if you
can find out who or what it is you can do more than I've been able to
do. Haven't you got some powerful enemy? Is there any weak spot in the
proposition? Rack your brains and let me know the result.

"These fellows don't seem worried and that's the strange part of it, for
I know that some of them have got in a whole lot more than they can
afford to lose.

"Whatever's at the bottom of it, it's mighty effective, for I'm up
against a blank wall. I've exhausted every resource and I can't raise a
dollar. If only we dared advertise the land and get some purchasers to
make part payments down it would keep things moving for a while, but I
suppose this is out of the question."

Was it? Symes laid the letter down. It was against the law to sell land
before the water