the run.  The most frantic efforts were made to cover, but without avail, and as the contracts matured, house after house went down with a crash that startled the country.  Mr. Belcher, the heaviest man of them all, turned the cold shoulder to his confreres in the stupendous mischief, and went home to his dinner one day, conscious that half a million dollars had slipped through his fingers.  He ate but little, walked his rooms for an hour like a caged tiger, muttered and swore to himself, and finally went off to his club.  There seemed to be no way in which he could drown his anger, disappointment, and sense of loss, except by a debauch, and he was brought home by his faithful Phipps at the stage of confidential silliness.

When his brokers appeared at ten the next morning, he drove them from the house, and then, with such wits as he could muster, in a head still tortured by his night’s excesses, thought over his situation.  A heavy slice of his ready money had been practically swept out of existence.  If he was not crippled, his wings were clipped.  His prestige was departed.  He knew that men would thereafter be wary of following him, or trusting to his sagacity.  Beyond the power of his money, and his power to make money, he knew that he had no consideration on ’Change—­that there were five hundred men who would laugh to see the General go down—­who had less feeling for him, personally, than they entertained toward an ordinary dog.  He knew this because so far, at least, he understood himself.  To redeem his position was now the grand desideratum.  He would do it or die!

There was one direction in which the General had permitted himself to be shortened in, or, rather, one in which he had voluntarily crippled himself for a consideration.  He had felt himself obliged to hold large quantities of the stock of the Crooked Valley Railroad, in order to maintain his seat at the head of its management.  He had parted with comparatively little of it since his first huge purchase secured the place he sought, and though the price he gave was small, the quantity raised the aggregate to a large figure.  All this was unproductive.  It simply secured his place and his influence.

No sooner had he thoroughly realized the great loss he had met with, in connection with his Wall street conspiracy, than he began to revolve in his mind a scheme which he had held in reserve from the first moment of his control of the Crooked Valley Road.  He had nourished in every possible way the good-will of those who lived along the line.  Not only this, but he had endeavored to show his power to do anything he pleased with the stock.

The people believed that he only needed to raise a finger to carry up the price of the stock in the market, and that the same potent finger could carry it down at will.  He had already wrought wonders.  He had raised a dead road to life.  He had invigorated business in every town through which it passed.  He was a king, whose word was law and whose will was destiny.  The rumors of his reverses in Wall street did not reach them, and all believed that, in one way or another, their fortunes were united with his.