and house after house crashed to
the ground.

"It's all right, old man," he told Hegan every morning; and it was the
same cheerful word that he passed out all day long, except at such
times when he was in the thick of fighting to have his will with
persons and things.

Eight o'clock saw him at his desk each morning. By ten o'clock, it was
into the machine and away for a round of the banks. And usually in the
machine with him was the ten thousand and more dollars that had been
earned by his ferries and railways the day before. This was for the
weakest spot in the financial dike. And with one bank president after
another similar scenes were enacted. They were paralyzed with fear,
and first of all he played his role of the big vital optimist. Times
were improving.

Of course they were. The signs were already in the air. All that
anybody had to do was to sit tight a little longer and hold on. That
was all. Money was already more active in the East. Look at the
trading on Wall Street of the last twenty-four hours.

That was the straw that showed the wind. Hadn't Ryan said so and so?
and wasn't it reported that Morgan was preparing to do this and that?

As for himself, weren't the street-railway earnings increasing
steadily? In spite of the panic, more and more people were coming to
Oakland right along. Movements were already beginning in real estate.
He was dickering even then to sell over a thousand of his suburban
acres. Of course it was at a sacrifice, but it would ease the strain
on all of them and bolster up the faint-hearted. That was the
trouble--the faint-hearts. Had there been no faint-hearts there would
have been no panic. There was that Eastern syndicate, negotiating with
him now to take the majority of the stock in the Sierra and Salvador
Power Company off his hands. That showed confidence that better times
were at hand.

And if it was not cheery discourse, but prayer and entreaty or show
down and fight on the part of the banks, Daylight had to counter in
kind. If they could bully, he could bully. If the favor he asked were
refused, it became the thing he demanded. And when it came down to raw
and naked fighting, with the last veil of sentiment or illusion torn
off, he could take their breaths away.

But he knew, also, how and when to give in. When he saw the wall
shaking and crumbling irretrievably at a particular place, he patched
it up with sops of cash from his three cash-earning