He paused, wishing he had not mentioned that fact. It was a slip of the tongue, one of the few he ever made, due to the peculiar pressure of the situation. Stires pleaded longer. It was no use, Cowperwood told him. Finally he went away, crestfallen, fearsome, broken. There were tears of suffering in his eyes. Cowperwood was very sorry. And then his father was announced. The elder Cowperwood brought a haggard face. He and Frank had had a long conversation the evening before, lasting until early morning, but it had not been productive of much save uncertainty. “Hello, father!” exclaimed Cowperwood, cheerfully, noting his father’s gloom. He was satisfied that there was scarcely a coal of hope to be raked out of these ashes of despair, but there was no use admitting it. “Well?” said his father, lifting his sad eyes in a peculiar way. “Well, it looks like stormy weather, doesn’t it? I’ve decided to call a meeting of my creditors, father, and ask for time. There isn’t anything else to do. I can’t realize enough on anything to make it worth while talking about. I thought Stener might change his mind, but he’s worse rather than better. His head bookkeeper just went out of here.” “What did he want?” asked Henry Cowperwood. “He wanted me to give him back a check for sixty thousand that he paid me for some city loan I bought yesterday morning.” Frank did not explain to his father, however, that he had hypothecated the certificates this check had paid for, and used the check itself to raise money enough to pay the Girard National Bank and to give himself thirty-five thousand in cash besides. “Well, I declare!” replied the old man. “You’d think he’d have better sense than that. That’s a perfectly legitimate transaction. When did you say he notified you not to buy city loan?” “Yesterday noon.” “He’s out of his mind,” Cowperwood, Sr., commented, laconically. “It’s Mollenhauer and Simpson and Butler, I know. They want my street-railway lines. Well, they won’t get them. They’ll get them through a receivership, and after the panic’s all over. Our creditors will have first chance at these. If they buy, they’ll buy from them. If it weren’t for that five-hundred-thousand-dollar loan I wouldn’t think a thing of this. My creditors would sustain me nicely. But the moment that gets noised around!... And this election! I hypothecated those city loan certificates because I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Davison. I expected to take in enough by now to take them up. They ought to be in the sinking-fund, really.” The old gentleman saw the point at once, and winced. “They might cause you trouble, there, Frank.” “It’s a technical question,” replied his son. “I might have been intending to take them up. As a matter of fact, I will if I can before three. I’ve been taking eight and ten days to deposit them in the past. In a storm like this I’m entitled to move my pawns as best I can.”