"You can all have your money. But I hope you won't spend it foolishly or stick it in the chimney at home where it'll burn up. I ain't going to bust, ladies and gentlemen. This town is all right; it's the best little town in Indiana; sound as Sugar Creek bottom corn. This little sick infant panic we've had to-day will turn over and go to sleep pretty soon. As an old friend and neighbor of you all, I advise you to go home—with your money or without it, just as you like. It's all the same to me."
"How about the First National?" a voice demanded.
Amzi was relighting his cigar. There was a good deal of commotion in the room as many who had been pressing toward the windows withdrew, reassured by the banker's speech.
Amzi, with one foot on a chair, the other on the note-teller's counter, listened while the question about the First National was repeated.
"I'll say to you folks," said Amzi, his voice clearing and rising to a shrill pipe, "that in my judgment the First National Bank can pay all its claims. In fact—in fact, I'm dead sure of it!"
The crowd began to disperse. Most of those who had drawn their money waited to re-deposit it, and Amzi walked out upon the step to view the situation at the First National, to whose doors a great throng clung stubbornly. The marshal and a policeman were busily occupied in an effort to keep a way open for traffic. Observed by only a few idlers, Tom Kirkwood emerged from the First National's directors' room and walked across to where Amzi stood like a guardian angel before the door of Montgomery's Bank. The briefest colloquy followed between Kirkwood and his quondam brother-in-law.
"It's fixed, Amzi."
"Thunder, Tom; I didn't know you'd got back."
"Got in at one, and have been shut up with Holton ever since. He's seen the light, and we've adjusted his end of the Sycamore business; I'm taking part cash and notes with good collateral. The whole construction crowd have settled, except Charlie, and he'll come in—he's got to. The settlement makes the traction company good—it's only a matter now of spending the money we've got back in putting the property in shape."
"That's good, Tom." And Amzi looked toward the courthouse clock. "Bill say anything about me?"