empers."

* * * * *

Market street was queer and unnatural without its rushing trolley cars.
All sorts of horse-drawn vehicles rattled up and down, carrying
passengers to and from the ferry. Many of the strikers were acting as
Jehus of improvised stages. Autotrucks, too, were impressed into
service. They rumbled along, criss-crossed with "circus seats,"
always crowded.

Frank made his way northward and east through the ruins. Here and there
little shops had opened; eating houses for the army of rehabilitation.
They seemed to Frank symbols of renewed life in the blackened waste,
like tender, green shoots in a flame-ravaged forest. Sightseers were
beginning to swarm through the burned district, seeking relics.

A large touring car honked raucously almost in Frank's ear as he was
crossing Sutter street, and he sprinted out of its lordly course,
turning just in time to see the occupant of the back seat, a large man,
rather handsome, in a hard, iron-willed way. He sat stiffly erect,
unbending and aloof, with a kind of arrogance which just escaped being
splendid. This was Patrick Calhoun, president of the United Railroads,
who had sworn to break the Carmen's Union. It was said that Calhoun had
sworn, though less loudly, to break the graft prosecution as well.

* * * * *

On Montgomery street several financial institutions were doing business
in reclaimed ruins. One of these was the California Safe Deposit and
Trust Company, which had made spectacular history of late. It was said
that spiritualism entered into its affairs. Frank had been working on
the story, which promised a sensation.

As he neared the corner of California and Montgomery streets, where the
crumbled bank walls had been transformed into a temporary habitation, he
saw a crowd evidently pressing toward it. The bank doors were closed,
though it was not yet three o'clock. Now and then people broke from the
throng and wandered disconsolately away. One of these, a gray-haired
woman, came in Frank's direction. He asked her what was wrong.

"They're busted ... and they've got me money," she wailed.

Hastily Frank verified her statement. Then he hurried to the office,
found his notes and for an hour wrote steadily, absorbedly a spectacular
tale of superstition, extravagance and financial chaos. As he turned in
his copy the editor handed him a slip of paper on which was written:
"Call Aleta Boice at