They fell into a discussion of plans for sending a quantity of the gold through the Assay Office. It was arranged finally that Brent should send one hundred and twenty-five boxes of the metal to the office of Strong & Co. Thence it would be transferred in smaller consignments, as fast as it could be handled, to the Assay Office in Wall Street for smelting. The transaction was to be in the name of the firm, and secrecy about the real ownership of the metal was, of course, to be maintained by Strong & Co. The resulting bullion, they decided, should be sold or used in whatever financial operations might be undertaken, as rapidly as might be without creating any serious disturbance in the market. It was long after midnight when the two men separated. This was only one of many and frequent consultations between them. Brent learned much in these talks, but the light which he gained upon the real nature of his problem was only partial and incidental. Wharton was completely in the dark as to the size of his friend’s fortune. He naturally supposed that it did not much exceed the millions which had already been disclosed to him. His suggestions were most of them, therefore, of little value to Brent in seeking a channel for the distribution of the golden contents of his reservoir. “If your fortune was five or ten times greater,” Wharton remarked one day, after several millions of the crude gold had already been turned into bullion, “you might do the public, and yourself too, a great service by smashing the bear clique that is having things all its own way in the market.” Brent seized the point with genuine interest. “Do you think it would be really a good thing if prices were put up by heavy buying?” he asked. “Most assuredly I do,” was the reply. “The market has been growing worse for weeks. Public confidence is so shaken that it is locking up its money in secret hiding-places again, as it did eighteen months ago. Pretty soon we shall have another money famine and then the bottom will go out of the market again. The intrinsic values of securities are not falling. Earnings and dividends are good. The trouble is not commercial; it is financial purely. When our financial Moses appears he will set things right again, but he isn’t in sight yet. It is quite true that fear of what may be done at Washington, or fear that nothing will be done, is the chief cause of the distrust which is daily aggravating the situation. How could it be otherwise than a boon, then, if public confidence should be strengthened by the introduction of fresh capital and the consequent advance of prices in the stock market? Why, my dear fellow, the addition of $100,000,000 in gold to the circulation in this country would settle in five days the silver question that has been tormenting us for the last five years.” Brent pondered a few moments. Then in sudden determination: