r out of hand. The Guardian's field men were
demoralized, beholding the fine agency plant of their company crumble
and melt away while they stood helpless to hold it together. And Mr.
Gunterson, when asked for remedies, could reply only in nebulous words
of even more crepuscular and doubtful pertinence. New York was
admittedly beyond him, and Philadelphia, harkening to siren voices that
promised great things, was presently to vote on the separation rule for
that city.

It is a depressing business, this watching the burning of one's own
ancestral house, the sinking of one's proudest ship of all the fleet.
It was altogether too much for Mr. Wintermuth. For nearly a week he
was missing from the office, and no man at the Guardian knew of his
whereabouts. With the decline in volume of the company's business, the
amount of routine work in the office became unbearably, demoralizingly
light. The map clerks loafed and the bookkeepers joked with one
another. Smith found time hanging heavy on his hands; but by Mr.
Gunterson's orders he stayed at his desk, although he could have done
much, had he been permitted to go out among his agents in the field, to
stem the tide.

In the local department the atmosphere was charged with the contagious
mourning of Mr. Cuyler, who with funereal face sat contemplating the
shrinkage of his business. For with the loss of his branch manager and
his two best brokers, there was a deficit in his premium returns which
he could not overcome. And certainly his melancholy countenance did
not attract business; it was a bold placer indeed who tried with quip
and banter to secure Mr. Cuyler's acceptance of a doubtful risk. His
world was awry, and all who ran might read it. His brow became
unpleasantly corrugated, his smile a thing of the past. If Mr.
O'Connor had wanted evidence of the success of his local campaign, he
could have gained it from one look at Mr. Cuyler.

Above stairs, however, doom being still a matter of immediate prospect
rather than a thing accomplished, Mr. Gunterson still held forth,
maintaining a sort of fictitious calm. At times he was even cheerful,
and did his best to rally his dazed and despondent subordinates. But
Bartels, seeing slip away accounts of agents he had audited for twenty
years, was in a state of stubborn, uncompromising rage which closely
resembled the dementia of a dumb animal, and Mr. Gunterson could do
nothing with him. Still the Vice-President strug