IN TWO PARTS.


PART I.


CHAPTER I.

A KNOT AND A MAN TO CUT IT.


Consternation! Consternation in the back office of Benjamin Brummage,
Esq., banker in Wall Street.

Yesterday down came Mr. Superintendent Whiffler, from Dunderbunk, up the
North River, to say, that, "unless something be done, _at once_, the
Dunderbunk Foundry and Iron-Works must wind up." President Brummage
forthwith convoked his Directors. And here they sat around the green
table, forlorn as the guests at a Barmecide feast.

Well they might be forlorn! It was the rosy summer solstice, the longest
and fairest day of all the year. But rose-color and sunshine had fled from
Wall Street. Noisy Crisis towing black Panic, as a puffing steam-tug drags
a three-decker cocked and primed for destruction, had suddenly sailed in
upon Credit.

As all the green inch-worms vanish on the tenth of every June, so on the
tenth of that June all the money in America had buried itself and was as
if it were not. Everybody and everything was ready to fail. If the