on any concrete suggestion."

"We acted before we began to talk," said J.J. Malone; "we have taken
steps to support Coal Tars, but the times are parlous. The tidal wave of
a panic mounts rapidly. If you insist on forcing us into a duel on the
floor of the Stock-Exchange today, the pillars of public confidence may
be seriously shaken. By two o'clock this afternoon the president's gavel
will be falling to announce failures. The disaster that we have feared
will come. In the end we shall beat you, but all of us will have wasted
ourselves in an exhausting struggle. There will be wreckage strewn from
ocean to ocean. We have come to remonstrate. We have come to urge peace
among ourselves and to warn you that a war between us is hardly a thing
for you to court."

"In short," Burton's words came with a snap that his eyes, too,
reflected, "you charge this flurry to my authorship. You come urging
peace with threats. Almost, gentlemen, you tempt me to do what you
charge me with doing. Threats have never seemed to me a persuasive
argument for peace." He paused and then laughed. "Go hack to your
respective sanctums of righteousness and plunder and you will see that
this tide will soon turn. It is not in my plans that this day shall go
down in Exchange history as a bear day. When I resolve on that, your
threats will hardly alter me. This is not that day. The rumor of my
attack is absurd. My brokers will be found bracing the market. The next
time that you feel an itch to coerce me, regard my answer as given in
advance. It is that you may go to hell. Good-day."

When they had gone Burton sent for Carl Bristoll and smilingly nodded
toward the outer door.

"The folks out there seemed excited," he commented drily. "Kindly
suggest to them that it's unnecessary for them to advertise their lack
of confidence in their chief by scurrying about during my interviews
like chickens when a hawk hovers overhead." Then he recounted what had
occurred--for this was one of the matters in which the secretary might
be admitted to his confidence. At the end of the recital Carl shook his
head. "I think you were magnanimous, sir. Though you didn't start it you
might have taken toll of the downward movement and lived up to your name
of the Great Bear. They were playing into your hands, I should say."

Hamilton Burton laughed.

"Carl, you are young. A man can fork Hades up from its bottom-most
clinkers only once in so often. I don't butcher my swine unti