“That’s Gram’ma Galt’s little fortune ... everything she has received out of Great Midwestern. Keep it in the safe for a few days so she will think we needed it.... Did you give out that statement?” “Not yet. There is plenty of time,” I said. “Tear it up. That isn’t the way we fight, ... is it?” Gram’ma Galt never got her envelope back. Two weeks later she died. v The Galt panic was one of those episodes that can never be fully explained. Elemental forces were loose. Those that derived from human passion were answerable to the will; there were others of a visitant nature fortuitous and uncontrollable. What man cannot control he may sometimes conduct. You cannot command the lightning, but if it is about to strike you may lure it here instead of there. Weather is so often the accomplice of dark enterprise! The financial weather at this time was very bad and favored the Bullguard conspiracy. Confidence, which in this case means the expectation of profit, was in decline. It had never recovered from the shock of that first accident to greed’s cauldron three months before when an ignorant popular mania for speculation came all at once to grief. Since then the rise of feeling against trusts, and the certainty that it would be translated into political action, had filled Wall Street with confusion and alarm. Bullguard’s part was to focus all this distrust and fear upon Galt. Each day the papers reported the weakness of Galt securities, how they fell under the selling of uneasy holders, and what the latest and most sinister rumors were. That was news. Nobody could help printing it. The financial editors each day repeated what eminent bankers said: “We pray to be delivered from this Jonah. His ways are not our ways, yet he bringeth wrath upon all alike.” That was true. They said it; they even believed it. The financial editors could not be blamed for writing it. So many winds running their feet together, like people in a mob, create a storm; and when it is over and they are themselves again, sane little winds, they wonder at what was done. The Wall Street news tickers reported that certain banks were refusing to lend money on Galt securities. This may have been a stroke of the conspiracy or merely a reaction to the prevailing fear, or both interacting. One never knows. But it was true, and Great Midwestern securities suffered another frightful fall. This went on for three weeks with scarcely an interruption. Day after day Galt stood at the ticker watching Great Midwestern fall,-- to 150, to 140, to 130, to 120, and did nothing. For the first time in his life he was on the defensive. That made the strain much worse. His normal relief was in action. He loved to carry the fight to the enemy, even rashly; but foolhardy he was not. He had foreseen that at the crucial moment he should stand alone against the field. Nobody believed he could win. The odds were too great. Therefore he could rely only upon himself.