“In short,” Burton’s words came with a snap that his eyes, too, reflected, “you charge this flurry to my authorship.  You come urging peace with threats.  Almost, gentlemen, you tempt me to do what you charge me with doing.  Threats have never seemed to me a persuasive argument for peace.”  He paused and then laughed.  “Go hack to your respective sanctums of righteousness and plunder and you will see that this tide will soon turn.  It is not in my plans that this day shall go down in Exchange history as a bear day.  When I resolve on that, your threats will hardly alter me.  This is not that day.  The rumor of my attack is absurd.  My brokers will be found bracing the market.  The next time that you feel an itch to coerce me, regard my answer as given in advance.  It is that you may go to hell.  Good-day.”

When they had gone Burton sent for Carl Bristoll and smilingly nodded toward the outer door.

“The folks out there seemed excited,” he commented drily.  “Kindly suggest to them that it’s unnecessary for them to advertise their lack of confidence in their chief by scurrying about during my interviews like chickens when a hawk hovers overhead.”  Then he recounted what had occurred—­for this was one of the matters in which the secretary might be admitted to his confidence.  At the end of the recital Carl shook his head.  “I think you were magnanimous, sir.  Though you didn’t start it you might have taken toll of the downward movement and lived up to your name of the Great Bear.  They were playing into your hands, I should say.”

Hamilton Burton laughed.

“Carl, you are young.  A man can fork Hades up from its bottom-most clinkers only once in so often.  I don’t butcher my swine until I have fattened them.  When the day comes, be assured they won’t call me off, but until I am ready I don’t strike.”  He took a turn or two across the floor and halted at the center of the room.  His eyes were burning now with an intense fire of egotism.

“Their anger—­their threats:  it’s all incense they burn to my power, but, good God, Carl, how they hate me!”

* * * * *

As the ship which was bringing Jefferson Edwardes back to his native shores drew near enough for the Navesink light to wink its welcome, the banker found himself in a pensive mood.  The last evening of the voyage was being celebrated with a dance on deck, but Edwardes, who had remained somewhat of a recluse during the passage over, was content to play the part of the onlooker.

The expectant spirit of home-coming lent a cheery animation to the rhythmic swaying of the dancing figures and brought a light to their eyes.  Jefferson Edwardes realized that his own mood was difficult to analyze.  His childhood had been spent in world-wandering and his youth in the exile of a battle for life in the mountains.  His later young manhood had found its setting in such capitals as St. Petersburg and