The junior metallurgical was in the thick of the June examinations when the catastrophe befell.  The brief story of it came to Tom in the first dictated letter he had ever received from his father, and the tremulous shakiness of the signature pointed eloquently to the reason.  Chiawassee Consolidated was out of blast—­“temporarily suspended,” in the pleasant euphemism of the elder Farley; the force, clerical and manual, was discharged, with only Dyckman left in the deserted South Tredegar offices to answer questions; and the three Farleys, with Major Dabney, Ardea and Miss Euphrasia, were to spend the summer in Europe.

Caleb wrote in some bitterness of spirit.  Though the Gordon holdings in the company, increased from time to time as the iron-master had prospered, amounted to a little more than a third of the capital stock, everything had been done secretly.  The general manager’s own notice of the shut-down had come in the posted “Notice to Employees.”  When the Farleys should leave, he would be utterly helpless; on their return they could repudiate everything he might do in their absence.  Meantime, ruin was imminent.  The affairs of the company were in the utmost confusion; the treasury was empty, and there were no apparent assets apart from the idle plant.  Creditors were pressing; the discharged workmen, led by the white coal-miners, were on the verge of riot; and Major Dabney’s royalties on the coal lands were many months in arrears.

Tom rose promptly to the occasion, and in all the stress of things found space to wonder how it chanced that he knew instinctively what to do and how to go about it.  Before his information was an hour old a rush telegram had gone to his father, asking from what port and by what steamer the Farleys would sail; asking also that certain documents be sent to a given New York address by first mail.

This done, he laid the exigencies frankly before the examiners in the technical school, praying for such lenity as might be extended under the circumstances.  Since all things are possible for an honor-man, beloved of those whose mission it is to grind the human weapon to its edge, the difficulties in this field vanished.  Mr. Gordon could go on with the examinations until his presence was needed elsewhere; and after the stressful moment was passed he could return and finish.

Tom, the boy, could not have gone on.  It would have been blankly impossible.  But Tom, the man, was a new creature.  While waiting for the reply to his telegram, he plunged doggedly back into the scholastic whirlpool, kicked, struggled, strangled, got his head above water, and found, vastly to his own amazement, that the thing was actually compassable in spite of the mighty distractions.

The return telegram from Gordonia was a day late.  Knowing diplomacy only by name, Caleb Gordon had gone directly to Dyckman for information regarding the Farleys’ movements.  Dyckman was polite to the general manager, but unhappily he knew nothing of Mr. Farley’s plans.  Caleb tried elsewhere, and the little mystery thickened.  At his club, Mr. Farley had spoken of taking a Cunarder from Boston; to a friend in the South Tredegar Manufacturers’ Association he had confided his intention of sailing from Philadelphia.  But at the railway ticket office he had engaged Pullman reservations for six persons to New York.