a single sweep of the clock-hands I
have contracted for more than a million dollars' worth of material for
the western extension--more than a million dollars' worth!"

"Well, I'm afraid you have sinned in haste to repent at leisure," said
the lawyer, with a weary man's disregard for the amenities. Then he
added: "I'm going to bed. I've had about all I can stand for one day."

Ford went to the room clerk for his key; reeled would be the better
word, since his brain was whirling. There was a telegram in his box, and
he tore it open with fresh and sharper misgivings. It was from Adair.

The sick man's getting sicker. What is the matter with your
prescription? Stock gone off five points, and the bears are
squeezing us to beat the band. Stories flying on the Street that we
are a kite without an effective tail; that the courts will keep us
out of the elevators. What do you say?

Ford consulted his watch. There was barely time to catch the midnight
train for New York, and his determination was taken on the spur of the
moment. It was all or nothing, now.

Hastily writing a wire to the cashier of the Denver bank where he kept
his personal account, and another to Adair, and leaving brief notes for
Kenneth and Truitt, he took a cab and had himself driven at a gallop to
the Union Station. He was the last man through the platform gates, but
he made his train, and was settling himself in the sleeper when another
telegram was thrust into his hand. This was from Frisbie, at Saint's
Rest; and that it brought more bad news might be argued from the way in
which he crushed it slowly in his hand and jammed it into his pocket. On
this day, if never before, he was proving the truth of the old adage
that misfortunes do not come singly.

Upon arriving in New York late the following evening, he had himself
driven to the Waldorf, where he found Adair waiting for him. A few words
sufficed to outline the situation, which the lapse of another day had
made still more desperate. So far from recovering, the falling stock had
dropped to twenty-nine and a half, and there was every indication that
the bottom was not yet reached.

"How do you account for it?" asked Ford, when the dismal tale had been
told.

"Oh, it's easy enough, when you know how," was the light-hearted
rejoinder. "As I wired you, there was something of a scramble on the
floor of the Exchange last week when we were fighting to find out
whether we should