th no bidders. This
was three-quarters of an hour after the Exchange opened.

Stoughton and the others sat quite motionless. The thing was too big for
them to grasp at once, but they had a dull sense that the foundation
stones of their great pyramid were shifting, that the gigantic structures
at St. Marys were dissolving into something phantom-like and tenuous. At
this juncture a message was brought in from Clark.

Hear market is very weak. Please buy five thousand for me by way of
support.

Wimperley read and handed it silently to Riggs. The little man swallowed
a lump in his throat. "By God!" he said unsteadily, "but he's got sand,
no doubt about it."

"What's that?" Stoughton demanded dully, and, reaching out, glanced at
the telegram. "Why throw Robert Fisher to the wolves? They're doing
well enough as it is," he grunted, and relapsed into a brooding silence.

Then began to arrive inquiries from country banks and cancellations from
country subscribers. Wimperley read them out as they came in, and, well
informed though he was of the wide distribution of Consolidated stock,
experienced a slow amazement at the broad range of his followers. Their
messages were indignant, despairing, threatening and pathetic. He began
to wonder why he had accepted a responsibility which was now for the
first time unveiled in such startling proportions. Yesterday the
Consolidated was a name to conjure with. To-day it was an epitome of
human fear and desperation.

Ten seconds before the noon gong struck on the Exchange, a frantic broker
lifted a bull like voice above the uproar.

"Sell five thousand consol at thirty-two, thirty-two!" He bellowed it
out raucously. The selling order had been flashed from Toronto.

"Taken at thirty-two," snapped Marsham's operator, who had opened the
perilous game that morning, and, smiling, jotted a note on his cuff. He
had made just eighty thousand dollars on that one transaction. The
market strengthened a little in the afternoon on short covering, the
matter of investment being thrown to the winds. Consolidated was now a
gambling counter, and the closing quotation stood at thirty-five. Former
values had shrunk by some eight millions. Gone was that laborious
upbuilding into which Clark and the rest had thrown their very souls;
overcast were the efforts of seven years. It was, to most people, a
question of what might be made of what was left. The works remained,
but, the pub