And then Buck turns to me and says:  “I don’t care what Atterbury thinks.  He only put in brains, and if he gets his capital out he’s lucky.  But what do you say, Pick?”

“Me?” says I.  “You ought to know me, Buck.  I didn’t know who was buying the stock.”

“All right,” says Buck.  And then he goes through the inside door into the main office and looks at the gang trying to squeeze through the railing.  Atterbury and his hat was gone.  And Buck makes ’em a short speech.

“All you lambs get in line.  You’re going to get your wool back.  Don’t shove so.  Get in a line—­a line—­not in a pile.  Lady, will you please stop bleating?  Your money’s waiting for you.  Here, sonny, don’t climb over that railing; your dimes are safe.  Don’t cry, sis; you ain’t out a cent.  Get in line, I say.  Here, Pick, come and straighten ’em out and let ’em through and out by the other door.”

Buck takes off his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his head, and lights up a reina victoria.  He sets at the table with the boodle before him, all done up in neat packages.  I gets the stockholders strung out and marches ’em, single file, through from the main room; and the reporter man passes ’em out of the side door into the hall again.  As they go by, Buck takes up the stock and the Gold Bonds, paying ’em cash, dollar for dollar, the same as they paid in.  The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can’t hardly believe it.  They almost grabs the money out of Buck’s hands.  Some of the women keep on crying, for it’s a custom of the sex to cry when they have sorrow, to weep when they have joy, and to shed tears whenever they find themselves without either.

[Illustration:  The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can’t hardly believe it.]

The old women’s fingers shake when they stuff the skads in the bosom of their rusty dresses.  The factory girls just stoop over and flap their dry goods a second, and you hear the elastic go “pop” as the currency goes down in the ladies’ department of the “Old Domestic Lisle-Thread Bank.”

Some of the stockholders that had been doing the Jeremiah act the loudest outside had spasms of restored confidence and wanted to leave the money invested.  “Salt away that chicken feed in your duds, and skip along,” says Buck.  “What business have you got investing in bonds?  The tea-pot or the crack in the wall behind the clock for your hoard of pennies.”

When the pretty girl in the red shawl cashes in Buck hands her an extra twenty.

“A wedding present,” says our treasurer, “from the Golconda Company.  And say—­if Jakey ever follows his nose, even at a respectful distance, around the corner where Rosa Steinfeld lives, you are hereby authorized to knock a couple of inches of it off.”

When they was all paid off and gone, Buck calls the newspaper reporter and shoves the rest of the money over to him.