It had seemed to Kirkwood that the beneficiaries of the construction company should pay into the Sycamore treasury enough money to repair the losses occasioned by dishonest work. Interest on the Sycamore bonds was due the 1st of April. The November payment had been made with money advanced by half a dozen country banks through negotiations conducted by William Holton. On the day that Jack Holton was persuading Alec Waterman to thrust himself forward as the people's protagonist, Kirkwood was tightening the screws on the construction company. If the sum he demanded was not paid by the 1st of April, he assured Samuel Holton's former allies that criminal proceedings would be instituted. As one of the construction crowd was just then much in the newspapers as a probable nominee for a state office, Kirkwood's determination to force a settlement on his own terms was dismaying. The bi-partisan bosses had figured altogether too much in the newspapers, and it was not pleasant to contemplate the opening of the books of the company to public gaze. March prepared to go out like a lion in Montgomery that year. While Alec Waterman was pondering his duty to the public as brought to his attention by Jack Holton, Fate seemed to take charge of his affairs. On March 28 the whistle of the Sugar Creek Furniture Company failed to rouse the town. The Sugar Creek Company, one of the industries that Paul Fosdick had promoted, had seemed to escape the dark fate that had pursued his other projects, so that the abruptness with which it shut down gave the local financial seismograph a severe wrench. The factory had been one of the largest employers of labor in Montgomery, and its suspension was reported to be due to the refusal of the First National to advance money for its next maturing weekly pay-roll. To several of the workingmen who consulted Waterman about their claims, he broached the matter of a mass meeting in the circuit courtroom to discuss the business conditions of Montgomery. Two hundred men and boys were thrown out of work by the failure of the furniture company; rumors as to the relations between the company and the First National caused the stability of the Holton bank to be debated guardedly; and April 1st was fixed definitely in the minds of the Main Street gossips as the date for drastic action in Sycamore matters. * * * * *