“Five thousand of New York Central at ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six, ninety-five, ninety-four, ninety-three, ninety-two, ninety-one, ninety, eighty-nine,” you might have heard him call; and when his sales were not sufficiently brisk he would turn to something else—­Rock Island, Panama, Central Pacific, Western Union, Northwestern, Union Pacific.  He saw his brother and Wingate hurrying in, and stopped in his work long enough to instruct them.  “Sell everything you can,” he cautioned them quietly, “at fifteen points off if you have to—­no lower than that now—­and buy all you can below it.  Ed, you see if you cannot buy up some local street-railways at fifteen off.  Joe, you stay near me and buy when I tell you.”

The secretary of the board appeared on his little platform.

“E.  W. Clark & Company,” he announced, at one-thirty, “have just closed their doors.”

“Tighe & Company,” he called at one-forty-five, “announce that they are compelled to suspend.”

“The First National Bank of Philadelphia,” he called, at two o’clock, “begs to state that it cannot at present meet its obligations.”

After each announcement, always, as in the past, when the gong had compelled silence, the crowd broke into an ominous “Aw, aw, aw.”

“Tighe & Company,” thought Cowperwood, for a single second, when he heard it.  “There’s an end of him.”  And then he returned to his task.

When the time for closing came, his coat torn, his collar twisted loose, his necktie ripped, his hat lost, he emerged sane, quiet, steady-mannered.

“Well, Ed,” he inquired, meeting his brother, “how’d you make out?” The latter was equally torn, scratched, exhausted.

“Christ,” he replied, tugging at his sleeves, “I never saw such a place as this.  They almost tore my clothes off.”

“Buy any local street-railways?”

“About five thousand shares.”

“We’d better go down to Green’s,” Frank observed, referring to the lobby of the principal hotel.  “We’re not through yet.  There’ll be more trading there.”

He led the way to find Wingate and his brother Joe, and together they were off, figuring up some of the larger phases of their purchases and sales as they went.

And, as he predicted, the excitement did not end with the coming of the night.  The crowd lingered in front of Jay Cooke & Co.’s on Third Street and in front of other institutions, waiting apparently for some development which would be favorable to them.  For the initiated the center of debate and agitation was Green’s Hotel, where on the evening of the eighteenth the lobby and corridors were crowded with bankers, brokers, and speculators.  The stock exchange had practically adjourned to that hotel en masse.  What of the morrow?  Who would be the next to fail?  From whence would money be forthcoming?  These were the topics from each mind and upon each tongue.  From New York was coming momentarily