Rod would never forget the crowd of people in the street an hour before the Norquay Trust Company opened its doors. People well and ill-dressed, shopclerks, business men, middle-aged women, people whose motors were parked at the curb. They strove and pushed and jostled for advantage, eager to be first, until policemen came and herded them into line,--a line that extended a block and curved around a corner up a side street like the tail of an uneasy, muttering serpent. All that forenoon and well past the luncheon hour they filed past the paying tellers, presented checks, passbooks, demanding their money, withdrawing accounts. As the cash boxes of the Norquay Trust emptied into pockets that departed hastily through the front door they were replenished by sheafs of Norquay estate currency withdrawn from other banks in hundred-thousand-dollar lots. From behind bronze grillwork Rod watched this scene. He marked the nervous eagerness of these people over their money. They were frightened, watchful, uneasy, until they had it in their hands. The air was charged with hostile currents, with a tension that communicated itself to department managers, the ledgerkeepers, the tellers. One man made a five-hundred-dollar mistake,--and broke under the strain. He sat in his cage and wept, and a murmuring that was like a growl swept through the lofty, pillared room until he was led away and another man took up his work of handing out cash. Once Rod's father came to sit by him for a minute. He looked out at the anxious faces, the people crowding forward, pressing eagerly up to the wickets. After a little he said to Rod in a low, tense whisper: "The coward. The damned coward! He couldn't face the music." About one-thirty the run tapered off. Every certificate of deposit, every demand was met promptly, courteously. Human nature asserted itself. An institution that could disgorge an enormous total and still exhibit great bales of currency and gold behind each teller _couldn't_ be shaky. Who peddled the story that the Norquay Trust was broke, anyhow? Some damn fool. It was a false alarm. Fellow that started it ought to be shot--scaring people like that--making so much trouble. The Norquay estate's backing it. No chance of a concern like that being in the hole. What you think? Eh? They stood out on the curb, repeating things like that. Men turned back at the very wickets. Some returned shamefacedly to redeposit their money, only to be told politely that the Norquay Trust declined to reopen closed accounts. The ordinary cash depositors ceased from troubling long before the closing hour. "That's that," Charlie Hale grunted. "We've pretty well disposed of the small fry. Fortunately a few big accounts can be met. And none of the trust accounts are at our heads like a pistol."