Cowperwood and his father were out of town at the time the fire began. They had gone with several friends—bankers—to look at a proposed route of extension of a local steam-railroad, on which a loan was desired. In buggies they had driven over a good portion of the route, and were returning to Philadelphia late Sunday evening when the cries of newsboys hawking an “extra” reached their ears. “Ho! Extra! Extra! All about the big Chicago fire!” “Ho! Extra! Extra! Chicago burning down! Extra! Extra!” The cries were long-drawn-out, ominous, pathetic. In the dusk of the dreary Sunday afternoon, when the city had apparently retired to Sabbath meditation and prayer, with that tinge of the dying year in the foliage and in the air, one caught a sense of something grim and gloomy. “Hey, boy,” called Cowperwood, listening, seeing a shabbily clothed misfit of a boy with a bundle of papers under his arm turning a corner. “What’s that? Chicago burning!” He looked at his father and the other men in a significant way as he reached for the paper, and then, glancing at the headlines, realized the worst. ALL CHICAGO BURNING FIRE RAGES UNCHECKED IN COMMERCIAL SECTION SINCE YESTERDAY EVENING. BANKS, COMMERCIAL HOUSES, PUBLIC BUILDINGS IN RUINS. DIRECT TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION SUSPENDED SINCE THREE O’CLOCK TO-DAY. NO END TO PROGRESS OF DISASTER IN SIGHT. “That looks rather serious,” he said, calmly, to his companions, a cold, commanding force coming into his eyes and voice. To his father he said a little later, “It’s panic, unless the majority of the banks and brokerage firms stand together.” He was thinking quickly, brilliantly, resourcefully of his own outstanding obligations. His father’s bank was carrying one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of his street-railway securities at sixty, and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of city loan at seventy. His father had “up with him” over forty thousand dollars in cash covering market manipulations in these stocks. The banking house of Drexel & Co. was on his books as a creditor for one hundred thousand, and that loan would be called unless they were especially merciful, which was not likely. Jay Cooke & Co. were his creditors for another one hundred and fifty thousand. They would want their money. At four smaller banks and three brokerage companies he was debtor for sums ranging from fifty thousand dollars down. The city treasurer was involved with him to the extent of nearly five hundred thousand dollars, and exposure of that would create a scandal; the State treasurer for two hundred thousand. There were small accounts, hundreds of them, ranging from one hundred dollars up to five and ten thousand. A panic would mean not only a withdrawal of deposits and a calling of loans, but a heavy depression of securities. How could he realize on his securities?—that was the question—how without selling so many points off that his fortune would be swept away and he would be ruined?