“What are they calling extras about?  Get me a paper quick.”  When a few minutes later a sheet still damp from the presses lay before her she needed only the flaring headlines to corroborate her fears.  With throbbing temples she swayed unsteadily as she made her way to a chair and sank down, gripping the paper tightly in a clenched fist.  Four words were hammering themselves into her brain and heart:  “Stock-Exchange in Frenzy.” ...  Her apathy of inactivity lasted only a few moments.  Then she came to her feet and, instead of panic, resolution sounded through her voice.  “Dress me, Julie,” she commanded.  “Dress me quickly.  I must be down-town at once.  ’Phone for the car.  Don’t waste an instant.”  At least she would be there—­where battle was raging.

“But, mademoiselle, in an hour you are due for a fitting—­your wedding-gown.”

“Don’t stop to talk—­hurry!”

Her wedding-gown!  She wondered if she would ever need it.

As her car neared the business district she could feel in the air such an electric tensity as one might expect to find at the verge of a battle-field.

At first it was only a spirit of heightened excitement in the street crowds; and the way men ran to meet the newsboys half-way.  Then it was humanity jostling about the doors of a bank with the excitement of swarming bees.  Across City Hall park came a glimpse of surging throngs at the bulletin boards, and the unpleasant chorus of voices as fresh bulletins went up.

* * * * *

Hamilton Burton had reached his office that morning at eight-thirty and was ready upon their arrival to confer with those lieutenants whom he had ordered to be with him at nine.  Len Haswell appeared with the lack-luster seeming of a jaded spirit and though Burton had on past occasions chosen him as leader of every fierce assault on the floor, because of his quick brain, his commanding physique and the voice that could boom out like a heavy gun over the pandemonium of a frenzied exchange, he now eyed his gigantic broker dubiously.  This was no day for his lieutenants to carry into that Gehenna which he meant to precipitate senses dulled, or hearts cast down.  This morning’s work called for such spirit as carries forward a tide of bayonets thirsting for blood back of the trenches they charge.  There must be the ferocity of barbarians bearing knife and torch:  of the hordes of the Huns and Vandals.  There of course was Hardinge, a man who, had he not been a broker, might have made a headquarters detective, so hard and devoid of humanity was the fashion in which he went about his work.  His nature was that of a cock tossed into the pit or a bull turned into the ring.  Such men Hamilton wanted now, for into the five hours of the Stock-Exchange day he meant to crowd such a sum of mad disaster and panic conflagration that the history of the Money World should be beggared for a comparison.  They had tauntingly named him the Great Bear, but this