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 calmly, when the supreme moment to confess defeat arrived, that he did not seem to confess it at all.

"Ah-hum!" he said, as if clearing his throat of something—swallowing a lump, perhaps—and passed the sheet back to Percy, and got up and went out alone into the works.

But while "Ah-hum," an inarticulate grunt, was all that he said, yet Percy, having known George Judson well for now nearing eight years, was sure that he interpreted the grunt aright. He rushed in and told John. John Williams let out a cry and came hurrying—to see the empty desk. He went back to tell somebody else, and Percy Mock was already telling other somebodies else. Within ten minutes at the outside, every chief of a department, every responsible employee in the business offices, knew that George Judson had admitted his colossal blunder.

George meanwhile was emphasizing his situation to himself by a swift tour through the works. He was saturating his mind with the conditions he had to meet, and asking himself bruskly, "What'll I do first?" His warehouses were filled to bursting by completed cars. His shipping sheds were congested with them. Even his assembling floors were so overcrowded that the men could hardly work. And every day the switch engines pushed long trains of material