There had been a tight money-market for two weeks. Though there had been uneasiness as to all the small and many of the large "industrials," belief in National Woolens and in the stability of John Dumont had remained strong. But of all the cowards that stand sentinel for capital, the most craven is Confidence. At the deafening crash of the fall of Dumont's private character, Confidence girded its loins and tightened its vocal cords to be in readiness for a shrieking flight. Dumont ruled, through a parent and central corporation, the National Woolens Company, which held a majority of the stock in each of the seventeen corporations constituting the trust. His control was in part through ownership of Woolens stock but chiefly through proxies sent him by thousands of small stock-holders because they had confidence in his abilities. To wrest control from him it was necessary for the raiders both to make him "unload" his own holdings of stock and to impair his reputation so that his supporters would desert him or stand aloof. On the previous day National Woolens closed at eighty-two for the preferred and thirty-nine for the common. In the first hour of the day of the raid Giddings and the other members of Dumont's supporting group of financiers were able to keep it fairly steady at about five points below the closing price of the previous day, by buying all that was offered--the early offerings were large, but not overwhelming. The supporters of other industrials saw that the assault on Woolens was a menace to their stocks--if a strong industrial weakened, the weaker ones would inevitably suffer disaster in the frightened market that would surely result. They showed a disposition to rally to the support of the Dumont stocks. At eleven o'clock Giddings began to hope that the raid was a failure, if indeed it had been a real raid. At eleven-twenty Herron played his trump card. The National Industrial Bank is the huge barometer to which both speculative and investing Wall Street looks for guidance. Whom that bank protects is as safe as was the medieval fugitive who laid hold of the altar in the sanctuary; whom that bank frowns upon in the hour of stress is lost indeed if he have so much as a pin's-point area of heel that is vulnerable. Melville, president of the National Industrial, was a fanatically religious man, with as keen a nose for heretics as for rotten spots in collateral. He was peculiarly savage in his hatred of all matrimonial deviations. He was a brother of Fanshaw's mother; and she and Herron had been working upon him. But so long as Dumont's share in the scandal was not publicly attributed he remained obdurate--he never permitted his up-town creed or code to interfere with his down-town doings unless it became necessary--that is, unless it could be done without money loss. For up-town or down-town, to make money was always and in all circumstances the highest morality, to lose money the profoundest immorality.