Bay State before three if it is necessary to trade in
the whole capital stock to do it."

As I came out of Parlor 11 to rush back to my office I said to the
despairing men who crowded the corridor outside the head-quarters, and
who had in their desperation thrown all caution or thought of
concealment to the winds: "Coal and Gas look to me like good buys." The
sudden revulsion of feeling was pathetic. In a minute the news had
spread by way of them to their brokers and their suffering friends:
"It's all right; Whitney and Lawson are buying stock." It got to the
Exchange almost as soon as I did.

We turned the market.

That night Whitney and Towle's plans were mapped out to the army and
their orders despatched with a vicious snap that plainly said: "Whoever
attempts to put the Whitney machine in a hole will be shown no mercy."
The morning papers announced that Whitney had picked up the gantlet
Governor Wolcott had thrown at his feet, and--all roads led up Beacon
Hill.

It was a quick, sharp set-to. Every man was lined up with a jerk, and
when the line was tallied up and tallied down and Towle had consented to
the last raise in price of votes and given away to the final squeeze,
the word went up and down the ranks that the Whitney bill would, on the
approaching last day of the session, go flying through both Houses over
the governor's veto with a vote or two to spare. Again the prices of the
two stocks shot upward.

Then, sharp and quick as a bolt of lightning, Fate, who apparently had
been camped on the trail of Bay State Gas and Addicks from the first,
let fly another of her quiver's contents. On the morning of the closing
day of the session (the one selected for the Whitney coup), there
slipped in and out amongst the Whitney legislative ranks a man with a
story. As each legislator listened, his brow knitted and he nodded
assent. The story was a simple one: In one of Whitney's former
campaigns, desperate like this one, on payment-day Towle had gone back
on his promises and forced the acceptance of a fifty-cents-on-the-dollar
settlement; and, so the story now went, he, Towle, had put the saved
fifty cents, a matter altogether of some $75,000, in his own pocket.
Probably he was now going to repeat the operation on an even larger
scale. In an hour there came to Young's Hotel a trusty messenger who
delivered to Towle himself the ultimatum of the Great and General Court
of the dear old Commonwealth: "Money in advance or