gured mainly as an example of the failure
of modern business methods when applied to the concealment of a working
corporation's true financial condition.

This unsympathetic point of view was sufficiently defined in a bit of
shop-talk between Harnwicke, the cold-blooded, and his traffic manager in
the office of the Overland Short Line the morning after the newspaper
announcement of the receivership.

"I told you they were in deep water," said the lawyer, confidently. "They
haven't been making any earnings--net earnings--since the Y.S.& F. cut
into them at Rio Verde, and the dividends were only a bluff for
stock-bracing purposes. I surmised that an empty treasury was what was the
matter when they refused to join us in the veto affair."

"That is one way of looking at it," said the traffic manager. "But some of
the papers are claiming that it was a legal hold-up, pure and simple."

"Nothing of the kind," retorted the lawyer, whose respect for the law was
as great as his contempt for the makers of the laws. "Judge MacFarlane had
no discretion in the matter. Hawk had a perfect right to file an amended
petition, and the judge was obliged to act upon it. I'm not saying it
wasn't a devilish sharp trick of Hawk's. It was. He saw a chance to smite
them under the fifth rib, and he took it."

"But how about his client: the woman who was put off the train? Is she any
better off than she was before?"

"Oh, she'll get her five thousand dollars, of course, if they don't take
the case out of court. It has served its turn. It's an ugly crusher for
the Loring management. Hawk's allegations charge all sorts of crookedness,
and neither Loring nor Kent seemed to have a word to say for themselves. I
understand Kent was in court, either in person or by attorney, when the
receivership order was made, and that he hadn't a word to say for
himself."

This view of Harnwicke's, colored perhaps by the fact that the
Trans-Western was a business competitor of the Short Line, was the
generally accepted one in railroad and financial circles at the capital.
Civilization apart, there is still a deal of the primitive in human
nature, and wolves are not the only creatures that are prone to fall upon
the disabled member of the pack and devour him.

But in the State at large the press was discussing the event from a
political point of view; one section, small but vehement, raising the cry
of trickery and judicial corruption, and prophesying the withdr