Charlie was very busy at the stock-board that afternoon. He bought a few hundred shares himself, but this had little avail in staying the price against the thousands with which Lawson, Rawson & Co. deluged the market. Charlie did not trouble himself much then with thinking; he had no positive capital in the firm of Townley & Tamms; but he had a feeling that it was a critical moment for them. He could not help a slight wonder that Tamms had yielded to his senior so easily; but then he reflected that a violent rupture at such a juncture meant to Tamms even more certain financial ruin than the firm incurred by making good the Terminal bonds. Despite Charlie’s strategy, and the few hundreds he bought with much vociferation, the price sagged from 93 to 90 and a fraction; and there was a wild and struggling crowd of panting men about the iron standard that bore the sign of Allegheny Central. Now and then Charlie would elbow his way into the outskirts and make a feeble bid or two; but a good-natured friend volunteered advice that it was no use, and “the best thing he could do was to wait until the Deacon had got his lines well out, and then catch him short,” advice which Charlie received with a smile. At all events, the Governor could not say he had not done things well; for even his friend had not suspected that it was he who was selling. Dick Rawson was standing in the middle, red-faced and breathless, his voice already hoarse, like a stag at bay amid a pack of leaping hounds. Charlie looked at him and for a fraction of a second caught his eye. Then Charlie looked at the wall beneath the gallery. That wall is used for members’ signals, and as he watched it, a wooden lid fell back, revealing a white placard with the number 449. Now, this was Charlie’s number, and it meant that there was someone for him in the lobby; he went out at once, and the number sprang back out of sight with a click, worked by some clockwork mechanism. In the lobby Charlie found a messenger with a sealed note addressed to him. It was a hastily pencilled scrawl from Rawson, the very man who was standing in the focus of the excited throng, but of course had given no sign of any understanding there. “I have sold 11,000. Shall I go on? R.” Charlie thought a minute; much of their stock, he knew, had been pledged at about 80, and to drive the stock below this point would cause a call for further margin. And, unless Charlie was very much mistaken, the firm of Townley & Tamms had just then no more securities to pledge. He wrote on the back of Rawson’s note: “Sell all you can down to 85. C. T.” The boy went back upon the floor of the Exchange. Charlie did not deem it wise to follow him; but in a few minutes a renewed roar from the Allegheny Central crowd told him that his order was being executed.