ept away.

The panic itself was brief as panics always are, but it left behind it
everywhere a paralyzed community. So far as Benham was concerned, only a
few actually failed, but, in a host of instances, possessors of property
who had thought themselves wealthy a year before found that they were
face to face with the knotty problem of nursing their dwarfed resources
so as to avoid eventual insolvency. Everything had shrunk fifty--often
one hundred--per cent., for the basis of Benham's semi-fabulous
development had been borrowed money. Many of Benham's leading citizens
were down to hard pan, so to speak. Their inchoate enterprises were
being carried by the banks on the smallest margins consistent with the
solvency of those institutions, and clear-headed men knew that months of
recuperation must elapse before speculative properties would show life
again. Benham was consequently gloomy for once in despite of its native
buoyancy. It would have arisen from the ashes of a fire as strenuous as
a young lion. But, with everybody's stocks and merchandise pledged to
the money lenders, enterprise was gripped by the throat. In the pride of
its prosperity Benham had dreamed that it was a law unto itself, and
that even Wall street could not affect its rosy commercial destinies. It
appeared to pious owners of securities almost as though God had deserted
his chosen city of a chosen country.

Lyons was among those upon whom the harrow of this fall in prices and
subsequent hand-to-mouth struggle with the banks pressed with unpleasant
rigor. In business phraseology he was too much extended. Consequently,
as the margins of value of the securities on which he had borrowed
dropped away, he was kept on tenter-hooks as to the future. In case the
process of shrinkage went much further, he would be required to supply
more collateral; and, if the rate of money did not fall, the banks would
refuse to renew his notes as they became due, unless he could furnish
clear evidence of his solvency. He was owing over one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars on paper secured only by the stock and bonds of
brand-new enterprises, which had no market negotiability. From the money
which he had borrowed he had sent, from time to time, to Williams and
Van Horne an aggregate of forty thousand dollars to protect some two
thousand shares of railroad stocks. Williams had especially commended
the shares of the coal-carrying roads to his attention, and the drop in
price