ndence;
and by the next morning the wire replies were beginning to come in.

Then came the crux. To insure prompt delivery of material, definite
orders must be placed immediately. A delay of a single day might entail
a delay of weeks in the shipments. Yet the risk of plunging the company
into debts it might never be able to pay was appalling. What if the
stock should not go up as prefigured?--if the bonds could not be
floated?

It was with the feeling that he might well be signing his own
death-warrant that Ford put his name to the first order for two hundred
thousand dollars' worth of steel rails for immediate delivery to the
company's line in Chicago. But after the first cold submergence it came
more easily, and when he left the office an hour before midnight, a cool
million would not have covered the obligations he had assumed during the
strenuous day.

Kenneth was sitting up for him when he reached his hotel, and the
usually impassive face of the general counsel reflected trouble.

"Out with it," said Ford wearily; and suddenly the new million of
indebtedness became a mountain weight to grind him to powder.

"We're blocked," was the brief announcement. "Two of the grain trains
are in, and the Transcontinental lawyers have won the toss. We're
enjoined by the court from using the service tracks to the elevators.
Didn't your local people tell you?"

"No," said Ford. "I had given orders that I was not to be disturbed. But
what of it? You expected something of the sort, didn't you?"

"Yes; and I provided for it. The injunction will be dissolved when we
have our final hearing; but long before that time the mischief will be
irreparable, I'm afraid."

"How?"

"It will be blazoned far and wide that we can't deliver the goods--that
the opposition has done us up. I've tried to keep it out of the
newspapers, or, rather, to persuade them not to make too much of it. But
it wouldn't go. The Transcontinental has all the pull in this town, it
appears."

"And you think it will affect the price of the stock?"

"It is bound to, temporarily, at least. And coming upon the heels of
to-day's sudden tumble--"

"What's that?" demanded Ford, dry-lipped, adding: "I haven't seen a
paper since morning."

Kenneth wagged his head gloomily. "It's pretty bad. P. S-W. closed at
thirty-three--five points off yesterday's market."

"Good Lord!" Ford's groan was that of a man smitten down in the heat of
the fight. "Say, Kenneth, within