And yet as the days went on he was far from easy. Many things caused him trouble and made him anxious. The gloom over the financial world deepened instead of lifting. The ordinary depositors grew shyer and shyer, as crash followed crash, and house followed house, in the awful ruin of the time.
No one breathed a word against the Daneford Bank; all who spoke of it acknowledged its position unassailable; still its business showed no vast increase, no such increase as would help Grey out of the whirlpool into which he had been drawn, although the Bank's borrowing power had been secured.
From bad, things went to worse. As the year wore on, some of his best customers began to feel the pressure of the times. Instead of finding funds flowing into the Bank in unexampled abundance, money ran out.
Old respectable firms now came to him and asked to be helped over the disastrous period. They brought this security and that, and begged for advances. If the name and fame of the Bank were to be magnified, this was the time to do it. He had still funds enough to make the Bank proof against contingency; over and above this he had a little margin, not much, but most useful.
About the middle of June the Weeslade Steamship Company quarrelled with their bankers, the Weeslade Valley Bank. The Steamship Company wanted an advance of five thousand pounds on the river steamboat Rodwell, which carried passengers between Daneford and Seacliff. The Weeslade Valley Bank refused. The Steamship Company withdrew their account from the Valley Bank, and offered their business to the Daneford Bank. The account was opened in the Daneford, and the advance was made by mortgage on the Rodwell, the Steamship Company paying interest on the advance, and depositing with the mortgage a policy of insurance against total loss by water or weather.
Towards the end of June the Daneford Bank's London agent failed, by which the Bank lost a clear twenty thousand pounds, besides losses by delay in getting a dividend. This was very serious. It caused a run on the Daneford Bank. In three days thirty thousand pounds were withdrawn in excess of average draughts.
On the morning of the third day the Daneford Bank issued a circular which took the town by storm. The circular was brief, and ran as follows:
"Thursday, 28th June, 1866.
"The Daneford Bank.
"Take notice, owing to the fact that a run has begun on the Daneford Bank, the offices of that Bank will be opened every morning at eight instead of nine, and will be closed at seven instead of four p.m., until this run has ceased.
"Henry Walter Grey."
This circular was town talk the next day. The admirers of Wat were more enthusiastic than ever in their praises of his boldness and wisdom. This circular killed the panic, and on Saturday of the same week the drawings had shrunk back to an average. Yet for another week the Bank was kept open from eight in the morning till seven in the evening.
On Monday, the 9th of July, a second circular was issued from the Bank, saying that as the run had ceased for a week the office hours for the future would be as of old, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.