The day happened to be cold and stormy. The twenty clerks were busily
and silently at work behind their counters and gratings, and the
fourteen directors were shut tight in their mahogany room. There was but
little passing to and fro from the street, though now and then a
half-frozen messenger came stamping in, and did his errand, with
benumbed fingers, through the little windows. The tempest made business
light.
At eleven o'clock Fields wrote a note and sent it to the directors'
room. The boy who carried it knocked softly, and the president appeared,
took the letter, and then closed the door again.
Then there was a moment of almost total silence; the clerks wrote, the
leaves rattled, and it seemed as if it were an instant before an
expected explosion.
Presently an explosion came. The clerks heard with astonishment a tumult
in the directors' room--exclamations, hurried questions, the hasty
rolling of chairs on their casters, and then the sound of feet.
The door was hastily drawn open, and those who were near could see that
nearly all the directors were clustered around it, straining their eyes
to look at the paying teller.
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