On leaving Patsie and her father he had gone down the Avenue in a vain hope that his father might be in town, hoping to catch him at his hotel. On his way to his amazement he perceived a long line of curious shapes stretched along the sidewalk. As he came nearer he saw a file of men and women, some standing, some seated, camped out for the night. Then he noticed above all the great white columns of the Atlantic Trust and he realized that these were the first frightened outposts of the army of despair and panic which would come storming at the doors on the morrow. By the morning a dozen banks scattered over the city were besieged by frantic hordes of depositors, a dozen others hastily preparing against the impending tide of evil rumor and disaster. With the opening of the Stock Exchange the havoc began, for with the threatened collapse of gigantic banking systems orders came pouring in from all over the country to sell at any price. In the wild hours that ensued holdings were thrown on the market in such quantities that the machinery of the Stock Exchange was momentarily paralyzed. Stocks were selling at half a dozen figures simultaneously, until it became a human impossibility for the frantic brokers to fulfil the demands that came pouring in on them to sell at any price. Any rumor was believed and shouted frantically: receivers were to be appointed for a dozen institutions: the State Superintendent's investigation was showing incredible defalcations and misuses of funds. Indictments were to be returned against the most prominent men in the financial world, and at the close of the day on top of the wildest fabrications of the imagination came the supreme horror of fact. Majendie, the president of the Atlantic Trust, was dead, slain by his own hand. But what happened this day would be nothing to the morrow. At Patsie's frantic request Bojo went down in the late forenoon to see Mr. Swift. He had to wait almost an hour in the outer offices, watching breathless, frantic men, men of fifty and sixty as panic-stricken as youngsters of twenty-five, breaking under the strain of their first knowledge of overwhelming ruin, an indiscriminate convulsive mass pouring in and out. Then a door opened and a secretary issued him in. Mr. Swift received him with an agitated clutch of the hand, and valuing the precious seconds, without waiting for his questions, burst out: "Mr. Crocker, it's absolutely humanly impossible for me to do what Miss Drake requested. We disposed yesterday of over forty thousand dollars. To sell now would be a financial slaughter to which I simply will not give my permission. Moreover, it's all very well to talk of selling, but who's going to buy?" "If you can't sell," said Bojo, gloomily, "Miss Drake would like to know what you could raise on her holdings as security."