"It's all over!"

The groans melted into broken curses and exclamations and died into silence as the cashier lifted his hand.

"I have the honour, gentlemen, of presenting this morning a distinguished servant of the people who has a message for you, the man whose unselfish devotion to the cause of Justice has earned him the right to a hearing, the Honourable James Stuart, your District Attorney."

The young lawyer stepped from the doorway in front of the cashier, who retired.

A roar of rage swept the crowd. Howls, curses, catcalls, hisses, hoots and yells were hurled into his face. It was a new experience in Stuart's life. He flushed red, stood for a moment surveying the mob with growing anger, and lifted his hand for silence.

The answer was a storm of hisses. Apparently he hadn't a friend in all the swaying mass of howling maniacs. He drew his heavy brows down over his eyes and the square jaws ground together with sullen determination.

He folded his arms deliberately and waited for silence. Evidently these people had swallowed every lie his enemies had printed. It was incredible that rational human beings should be such fools, but it was true.

For a moment the hideous thought forced itself into his soul that a life of unselfish public service was futile. In all this babel of jangling cries and cat-calls not one voice was lifted in decent protest. He felt that his work was a failure and he had been pitching straws against the wind.

As wave after wave of idiotic hissing rose and fell only to swell again into greater fury a feeling of blind rage filled his being. He understood at last the persistence in the human mind of the doctrine of hell. It was a necessity of the moral universe. God simply must consume such trash. Nothing else could be done with it.

With a sudden impulse, he threw his right hand high above his head and his voice boomed over the crowd in a peal of command. The effect was electrical. A painful hush followed. The swaying mass stood rooted in their tracks by the tones of authority his first word had expressed.

"Gentlemen!"

He paused and his next words were spoken in intense silence.

"My answer to the extraordinary greeting you have given me this morning is simple. I am not working for your approval, I work for my own approval, because I must in obedience to the call within me. Long ago in my life I gave up ambition and ceased to ask anything for myself.

You cannot destroy my career because I cherish none. If I succeed in the work to which I have been called it is well. If I fail, it is also well. I have done my duty and obeyed the call to the service of my fellow-man!"

Again he paused as his voice choked with deep emotion. The crowd stared as if in a spell.

"The scene you are enacting here this morning is a disgrace to humanity. You have surrendered to the unmeaning fear that drives a herd of swine over a precipice. You have, by an act of your will, joined in a movement to paralyze the motive power of the world--faith! There is but one thing that runs this earth of ours for a single day--faith in one another.

"You are scrambling here for a few dollars in this bank. What can you do with it when you draw it out? There is not enough cash in the world to transact a single day's business. Business is run on credit--faith.

"Faith is the sustaining force of all personal and social life; a panic is its end--a lapse to the level of the beast of the field whose life is ruled by fear.

"Banks were not made as strong boxes for the hoarding of money. Money was hoarded in strong boxes centuries before banks were invented. Banks are institutions of public credit, to facilitate the useful circulation of money, not its withdrawal from use. The business of a bank is to keep money moving and make it do the world's work. You are attempting to stop the work by the destruction of its faith."

Suddenly a man who had quietly pushed his way through the crowd sprang on the step before the speaker and thrust a revolver into his face.

A cry of horror swept the crowd, as Stuart paused, turned pale and looked steadily down the flashing barrel into the madman's eyes.

"Who started this work of destruction?" he cried--"You--You---Do you hear me? And I've been commanded by God Almighty to end this trouble by ending you!"

As Stuart held the glittering eyes levelled at him across the blue-black barrel he could see the man's nervous and uncertain finger twitching at the trigger.

For the first time in his conscious existence he felt the stinging anguish of physical fear. Never had life--life for its own sake with strong sound limbs and alert mind--seemed so sweet. At the first touch of fear his tall body had suddenly stiffened and the pallor of death shrouded his face. The next instant came the conscious shame and horror of the moment's cowardice. The crowd that watched the tragic situation had not known, but he knew and it was enough. His face flushed red and his deep set eyes began to sparkle with anger, the red animal-anger of power wrought to insane fury. Every nerve and muscle and sinew quivered with the desire to kill, a consuming passionate desperate lust! His fingers closed involuntarily as the claws of a beast and he drew his breath with trembling intensity.

For one brief instant he hated all men. Not merely the fool who had shamed his soul with fear but all the mob of hissing howling brutes that surged about him and all the millions like them that crawl over the earth.

There was a pause of only a few seconds while these ideas flashed with the vividness of lightning through his imagination. The crowd noted no pause of any kind. His action seemed instantaneous.

With a sudden panther-like spring he leaped across the five feet which separated him from the man who held the revolver. His left hand gripped the weapon and threw it into the air as it was fired while his right hand closed on the throat of his assailant. With his knee against the man's breast he hurled him down the steps, wrenched the revolver from his hand and with a single blow knocked him into insensibility.

[Illustration: "He hurled him down the steps"]

The spell was broken. The mob that hated him saw their chance. A yell of rage swept them, and a dozen men sprang toward him with curses. For a moment he held his own, when suddenly a well-directed blow from behind knocked him down.

He sprang to his feet instantly, climbed on the shoulders of the mass of enraged men who pressed on him from every direction and attempted to walk on their heads toward the two detectives who were fighting their way toward him. He made two successful leaps missed his foothold and fell in the arms of his enemies. In blind fury he felt the smash of blows on his face and head. A stream of blood was trickling down his forehead and its salty taste penetrated his mouth. With a desperate effort he freed his hands and knocked two men down.

A sudden crash from space seemed to send the world into a mass of flaming splinters and the light faded. He heard the soft rustle of silk and felt the pressure of a woman's lips on his. Surely he must be dead was the first thought that flashed through his mind. And then from somewhere far away in space came Nan's voice low and tense:

"Come back, Jim, dear, I've something to tell you. You can't die, you shall not die until I've told you!"

A tear fell on his face and he knew no more until suddenly, into the dark cave in which he lay dead a ray of sunlight flashed.

He opened his eyes and found Nan bending over him. His hand rested on her soft arm and his head lay pillowed on her breast.

"Why, Nan, it's you."

Her lips quivered. She closed her eyes and murmured:

"Thank God, you're alive!"

"Why, yes," he said, slowly rising. "Very much alive; what's happened?"

She placed her finger on his lips.

"Oh, I remember now."

"You mustn't talk, Jim," she said, with quiet authority. "The doctor will be here in a moment."

"Oh, I'm not hurt much, just a few scratches and bruises." He lifted himself on his elbow. "Oh the snake that choked me! If I could only have killed him I think I'd be happy."

He looked at Nan in a stupor.

"But what on earth are you doing here, Nan?"

He looked about the room and saw that he was in the inner office of the president of the bank, alone with Bivens's wife. He was lying on the big leather couch.

"I heard that you were going to speak this morning. I wanted to hear you and came. I arrived just as you began and managed to get into the bank. I saw that man try to kill you, Jim, and that crowd of wild beasts trampling you to death. I saw you knock them down one at a time while I watched you, paralyzed with fear. I wanted to rush out and fight my way to your side--but I was a coward. I tried to go, but my legs wouldn't move. I only stood there trembling and sobbing for some one else to go. I'm afraid I'm not very heroic."

Stuart smiled feebly.

"I understand, Nan, I felt the same thing out there."

"The two detectives pulled you out and dragged you into the bank."

The doctor entered and quickly dressed Stuart's wounds, and turned to Nan.

"He'll be all right in a week or so, Mrs. Bivens--provided he doesn't insist on breaking the run on another bank by the spell of his eloquence. I hope you can persuade him not to try that again."