When Bojo returned home after a brief stolen interview with Patsie, he could hardly believe what he had himself witnessed. It seemed incredible that all that magnificence and luxury might be dissipated in a night, could depend upon the wavering of an hour in a mad exchange. But deeper than the feeling of impending disaster—which he even now could not realize—was the disclosure of the true state of affairs in the Drake household. Without telling Patsie the extent of her father's danger, he had told of Drake's applying to his wife for assistance and her refusal. Then Patsie brokenly had told her part, how she had pled with her mother and sought in vain to place before her the true seriousness of the situation, her father's peril and his instant need. To entreaties and remonstrances Mrs. Drake remained deaf, sheltering herself behind an invariable answer. Why should she throw good money after bad? What was to be gained by it? If he had thrown away the family fortune, all the more reason for her to save what she had. The worst was that Dolly was abroad and Doris and her husband were cruising off Palm Beach and the telegram they sent might not reach them in time.

The next morning Bojo waited fitfully for the opening of the Stock Exchange, with the dreaded memories of Haggerdy's prophecies running in his head. It took him back to the days when he himself had been a part of the vast maelstrom of speculation. He breakfasted with one eye on the clock waiting for the hands to advance to the fatal hour of ten. At five minutes past that hour he went feverishly across the way to the ticker in the neighboring hotel brokerage. He had a feeling as though he were being sucked back into the old life of violent emotions and unreal theatrical upsets. He remembered the day before the drop in Pittsburgh & New Orleans when he had waited in the Hauk and Flaspoller offices matching quarters with Forshay to endure the last few intervening minutes before the crisis which was to sweep away their fortunes as a tidal wave obliterates a valley. He had not understood then the ironical laughter in Forshay's eyes, but as he came back again to the old associations he felt himself living over with a new poignant understanding the final act of that tragedy.

Between the Tom Crocker of those breathless days and the ordered self which he had built up during these last months of discipline there seemed to intervene unreal worlds.

The group gathered in the hotel branch of Pitt & Sanderson were indolently interested rather than excited. They were of the flitting and superficial gambling type, youngsters still new to the excitement of the game and old men who could not tear themselves away from their established habit. They formed quite a little coterie in which the differences of age and wealth were obliterated by the common bond of the daily hazard. He knew the type well, the reckless plunger risking thousands on shallow margins, determined to make or lose all at one killing; the rodent, sharp-eyed, close-fisted veteran, wary from many failures, who was content to play for half a point rise and take his instant profit. The lounging group studied him with a moment's curiosity, seeking in which category to place the intruder, whether among the shifting truant crowd stopping for the moment's information or among that harried occasional group of lost souls who came expectant of nothing but complete disaster.

Bojo went to the tape with almost the feeling with which a reformed drunkard closes his hand over the glass that had once been his destruction. His mind, excited by the memories of the night before, was prepared for a shock. To his surprise the clicking procession of values—Reading, Union Pacific, Amalgamated Copper, Northern Pacific—showed but fractional declines. The break he had come to witness did not develop. He waited a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour. The market continued weak but heavy.

"Nothing much doing," he said, turning to his neighbor, a financial rail bird of a rather horsy type, grisled and bald.

"Playing it short?"

"Haven't yet made up my mind. What do you think?" he said, to draw the other on.

"Think?" said the other with the enthusiasm of the gambler's conviction. "Lord, there's only one thing to think. This market's touched bottom two weeks ago. When it starts to rise watch things go kiting."

"You think so?" said Bojo, with the instinctive tendency to seek hope in the slightest straws that is the strangest part of all the strange acquaintanceships of the moment which speculation engenders. He had to listen for five minutes to impassioned oratory, to hearing all the reasons recounted why the long depression was nothing but psychological and an upward turn a certainty. He slipped away presently, rather relieved at this confidence from a shallow prophet, and when he met Patsie by appointment, the news he brought her dispelled the feelings of foreboding under which she had been suffering the last week.

"After all, perhaps we have been rather panicky," he said, with a new assumption of cheerfulness. "Remember one thing, your father knows this game and when he says that the big group does not intend to have a panic, because they themselves have too much to lose, Patsie, he must know what he is talking about."

"If Doris were only here," she said, her woman's instinct unconvinced.

"You sent the telegram?"

"Last night. I should have had the answer this morning. That's what worries me. Perhaps it won't reach them in time and even if it does it will be over two days before they can get back."

"It would help a good deal," he admitted. The prospect of going to Doris for help after what had happened was one from which he shrank, yet he was resolved to stop at nothing, willing to sacrifice his pride if only to secure the aid which, knowing their connections, he knew Boskirk could bring the imperilled financier.

"At least I shall do what I can do," she said, with a determined shake of her head.

He looked at her doubtfully. "I am afraid, Patsie, that a few hundred thousands will not help much—but if your mind is made up."

"It is made up."

"Very well, what address shall I give them?" He leaned forward and repeated the number.

Twenty minutes later they were in the office of Swift and Carlson, in the inner room, talking to the senior partner. Thaddeus C. Swift was one of the innumerable agents through whom Daniel Drake operated in the placing of his more serious enterprises, of the older generation of Wall Street, conservative, seemingly unruffled by the swirling tide of strident young men which churned about him. He had known Patsie since her childhood and received her as he would his own daughter, with perhaps a quizzical and searching glance at the young man who waited a little uncomfortably in the background. Patsie opened the conversation directly without the slightest hesitation.

"Mr. Swift," she said imperiously, "you must give me your word that you will keep my confidence." And as this caused the old gentleman to stare at her with a startled look, she added insistently: "You must not say a word of my coming here or whatever I may ask you to do. Promise."

"Sounds quite terrible," said Mr. Swift, smiling indulgently. In his mind he decided that the visit meant a demand for a few hundred dollars for some girlish fancy. "Well, how shall I swear? Cross my heart and all that sort of thing?"

"Mr. Swift, I am serious, awfully serious," stamping her foot with annoyance, "and please do not treat me as a child."

He saw that the matter was of some importance, and scenting perhaps complications, withdrew into a defensive attitude.

"Suppose you tell me a little of what you want of me," he said carefully, "before I give such a promise."

Patsie, who for her reasons did not wish her father to have the slightest suspicion of this visit, hesitated, looked from Mr. Swift to Bojo, and turned away nervously, seeking some new method to gain her end.

"Miss Drake is coming to you as a client," said Bojo, deciding to speak, "to consult you about her interests. So long as it is about her business affairs, it seems quite natural, doesn't it, that you should keep her confidence?"

"Eh, what?" said Mr. Swift, frowning. He seemed to repeat the question to himself, and answered grudgingly: "Of course, of course, that's all right, that's true. If it is only to consult me about your business affairs—"

"It is absolutely that," said Patsie hastily. She stood beside him, holding out her hand obstinately. "Your promise. No one is to know what I do."

Mr. Swift made a mental reservation and nodded his head. The three sat down.

"How much have I deposited in stocks and bonds to my account?" asked Patsie.

"Do you wish a list?" said Mr. Swift, preparing to touch a button.

"No, no, not now; only the value—in a general way."

"Of course," said Mr. Swift, caging his fingers and looking over their heads to the depths of the ceiling, "of course, it depends somewhat on the state of the market. While what you have is the best of securities, still, as you must know, even the best will not bring to-day what it would a year ago."

"Yes, but in a general way," she insisted.

"In a general way," he said carefully, "I should say what you have would represent a capital of $500,000 to $510,000. Possibly, under favorable conditions, a little more."

Patsie and Bojo looked at him in astonishment.

"You said $500,000?" she said incredulously.

He nodded.

"You are thinking of Doris," she said, bewildered.

"Not at all. That is approximately the value of your holding. Your father deposited with me securities to the value of $260,000 on your coming of age last January."

"Yes, yes; I know that, but—"

"And securities of the par value of $250,000 on the occasion of your sister's marriage."

"He did that?" exclaimed Patsie, her heart in her throat; "he really did that?" Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away hastily with an emotion quite inexplicable to the older man. Bojo himself was much moved at the thought of how the father in the face of a supreme conflict had been willing to risk his reserves to provide for the future of his daughters.

Patsie came back, her emotion in a measure controlled. She placed her hand upon the shoulder of Mr. Swift, who continued to gaze at her without comprehension.

"I know you don't understand; you will later. Mr. Swift, I want you to sell every one of my securities, now, immediately. I want everything in cash."

Mr. Swift looked at her as though he had seen a ghost and then rapidly at Bojo. In his mind perhaps was working some fantastic idea of an elopement. Perhaps Patsie guessed something of this, for she blushed slightly and said:

"My father needs it. I want to give it to him."

Her words cleared the atmosphere, though they left Mr. Swift obstinately determined.

"But, Patsie," he said, as a father might to a child, "this is a bombshell. I can't allow you on my own responsibility to do a thing like this on impulse. You should not ask me. How do you know your father is in need? He has not sent you here?"

"No, no; never. Don't you know him better than that? If he knew he never would permit it. That's the difficulty, don't you see? He must never know of it and you must arrange some way so he will never guess it is coming from me."

Mr. Swift stared at her utterly amazed. At length he turned and, addressing Bojo, said:

"You are in the confidence of Miss Drake? If so, perhaps you can help me out. Does she know what she is doing, and is it possible that she has any valid reason for believing that her father can possibly be in need of such heroic assistance as this?"

His face expressed so much amazement mingled with consternation at the thought that Daniel Drake could possibly be in difficulties that Bojo for the first time perceived what he should have foreseen, the direct danger to the financier from the suspicion of his true situation which must come from the revelation of Patsie's intentions.

"Mr. Swift," he said, in great perturbation, "I do not know whether we have done wisely in speaking to you so frankly. You will perhaps understand now why Miss Drake insisted on a promise of secrecy."

"What! Daniel Drake in need of money?" said Mr. Swift, staring at him or rather through him, and already perceiving the tremendous significance of this disclosure upon the distraught times.

"At least Miss Drake believes so," said Bojo carefully. "She may exaggerate the necessity. What she is doing she is doing because she has made up her mind herself to do it and not because I have advised her or suggested it in the slightest. You are too good a friend of the family I know, sir, to speak of what has occurred."

"Oh, Mr. Swift," said Patsie, breaking in and seizing his hand impulsively, "you will help me, won't you?"

Mr. Swift gazed at her blankly, a hundred thoughts racing through his mind; still too upset by the news he had just received, which could not fail to be full of significance to his own fortunes, to be able to focus for the moment on the immediate decision.

Patsie repeated her demand with a quivering lip. He came out of his abstraction and began to think, arranging and rearranging a pile of letters before him, convinced at last that the situation was of the highest seriousness.

"Wait, wait a moment; I must think it over," he said slowly. "This is an unusually serious decision you have put up to me. My dear Patsie, you know nothing about such matters; you're a child."

"I am eighteen and I have a right to dispose of what belongs to me."

"Yes, yes, you have the right, but I have the right also to advise you and to make you see the situation as it exists." His manner changed immediately and he said simply and frankly, "Since you have trusted me, you must give me your full confidence. I shan't abuse it. Mr. Crocker, I can see by your manner and your attempt at caution that this matter is not a trifle. Do you know from your own knowledge how serious it is? Please do not hide anything from me."

"I won't," said Bojo. "I know of my personal knowledge and I believe it to be as serious as it can possibly be."

The two men exchanged a glance and the look in both their eyes told Swift even more than his words revealed, more than he wished Patsie herself to suspect.

"Suppose the very worst were true," said Mr. Swift after a moment's thought, "that your father was in danger of complete failure? I am merely supposing this extreme case to show you the difficulty of my position. Your father has placed these securities to your account with the distinct intention that whatever happens to him you shall be provided for as his other daughters are provided for, and undoubtedly his wife is taken care of. If I should allow you to do this, even as a matter of sentiment it is possible in an extreme case everything you have as well as everything your father possesses might be wiped away. Do you realize that?"

"And that's just what I am afraid may happen," she exclaimed, worried beyond the thought of caution by her forebodings.

"And you are willing to take the risk of losing everything?" he said slowly; "for after all there is no reason why you should sacrifice what belongs to you rightfully and legally even if your father should fail completely."

"No reason?" she cried. "Do you think for a moment that money means anything to me when he, my father, the one who has given it to me, needs it?"

"But if even this won't save him?" he persisted, shaking his head.

"What has that got to do with the question?" she said impatiently, almost angrily. "Everything I have I want him to have. That's all there is to it."

He gazed at her fresh and ardent face a moment and then laid his hand over hers, muttering something underneath his breath which Bojo did not catch, although he divined its reverence.

"Then you will do as I wish?" she cried joyfully, guessing his surrender.

He nodded, gave a helpless glance to Bojo and cleared his throat huskily. "As you wish, my dear," he said very gently.

"And you will sell everything at once?" she cried.

"I can't promise that," he said quietly. "Such a block of securities can't be thrown on the market all at once. But I will do my best."

"But how long will it take?" she said in dismay.

"Four days, possibly five."

"But that will be too late. I must have it all the day after to-morrow."

"That will mean a serious sacrifice," he said.

"What do I care? I must have it by to-morrow night."

"You are determined?"

"Absolutely."

"It will have to be so then."

"And when that is done," she cried joyfully, clapping her hands in delight, "you will help me to send it to him so he will never suspect it?"

He nodded, yielding every point, perhaps more moved than he cared to show.

They left the office after Patsie had signed the formal order.

At the house they found a telegram from Doris.

Doris.

This news and their success of the morning restored their spirits immeasurably. It seemed as though clouds had suddenly cleared away and left everything with a promise of sunshine and fair weather. They lunched almost gaily. Mrs. Drake still kept her room and Patsie was impatient for the day to pass and the next one to have the certainty that the sale was achieved. Confident from her first success she declared once Doris was back she would go with her sister to her mother and shame her if they could not persuade her into a realization of the gravity of the situation. When Bojo left they had even forgotten for the space of half an hour that such bugbears as Wall Street, loans and banks could exist. The realization of the seriousness of human disasters had somehow left them simple and devoid of artifices or coquetry before each other. He found again in her the Patsie of earlier days. He comprehended that she loved him, had always loved him, that the slight misunderstanding that had momentarily arisen between them had come from the long summer renunciation and the passionate jealousy of one sister for the other. He comprehended this all, but did not take advantage of his knowledge. On leaving her he held her a moment, his hands on her shoulders, gazing earnestly into her eyes. From this intensity of his look she turned away a little frightened, not quite reconciled. Already his, but still hesitating before the final avowal. The knowledge of how indispensable he was to her in these moments of trial restrained him in the impulsive movement towards her. He took her hand and bowed over it a deep bow, a little quixotic perhaps, and hurried away without trusting himself to speak. Outside he went rushing along as though the blocks were mere steps, swinging his cane and humming to himself gloriously. He was so happy that the thought that any one else could be unhappy, that any disaster could threaten her or any one who belonged to her, seemed incredible.

"Everything is going to turn out all right," he repeated to himself confidently. "Everything; I feel it."

He went back to the Court radiant and gay and dressed for dinner, surprising Granning, who came in preoccupied and anxious, with the flow of animal spirits. At the sight of his contagious happiness Granning looked at him with a knowing smile.

"Well, things aren't so black after all, then?"

"You bet they're not!"

"Glad to hear it. You had me scared last night. My guess is that something besides stocks and bonds must have cheered you up," he added suspiciously with a wise nod of his head. "Glad to see it, old fellow. You've been mum and gloomy as a hippopotamus long enough."

"Have I?" said Bojo, laughing with a little confusion. "Well, I'm not going to be any longer. You're an old hippopotamus yourself." He got him around the knees and flung him with an old time tackle on the couch, and they were scrambling and laughing thus when the telephone rang. It was Patsie's voice, very faint and pitiful.

"Have you heard? The Clearing House has refused to clear for the Atlantic Trust. Oh, Bojo, what does it mean?"