Inside the bank that June morning the clerks and accountants on their
high stools were bent over their ponderous ledgers, although it was
several minutes before the opening hour. The gray-stone building was
in Atlanta's most central part on a narrow street paved with asphalt
which sloped down from one of the main thoroughfares to the section
occupied by the old passenger depot, the railway warehouses, and
hotels of various grades. Considerable noise, despite the closed
windows and doors, came in from the outside. Locomotive bells slowly
swung and clanged; steam was escaping; cabs, drays, and trucks rumbled
and creaked along; there was a whir of a street-sweeping machine
turning a corner and the shrill cries of newsboys selling the morning
papers.

Jarvis Saunders, member of the firm of Mostyn, Saunders & Co., bankers
and brokers, came in; and, hanging his straw hat up, he seated himself
at his desk, which the negro porter had put in order.

"I say, Wright"--he addressed the bald, stocky, middle-aged man who,
at the paying-teller's window, was sponging his fat fingers and
counting and labeling packages of currency--"what is this about Mostyn
feeling badly?"

"So that's got out already?" Wright replied in surprise, as he
approached and leaned on the rolling top of the desk. "He cautioned us
all not to mention it. You know what a queer, sensitive sort of man he
is where his health or business is concerned."

"Oh, it is not public," Saunders replied. "I happened to meet Dr. Loyd