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 like that and—buck up, Judson! You're not the man to quit when you've got a fighting chance. Drop everything and go."

But George stood motionless—petrified. "Drop everything? Sell out? I couldn't do it." A look of awful pain was in his eyes.

The doctor for the first time grew impatient. "But isn't the love of your wife worth more than your factory? That's where you've been weak, Judson—all along."

"But you don't understand, Doctor," he argued dismally. "I'm nailed to the spot. The very existence of the Judson-Morris Motor Works as financed now is based on an operation programmed through a number of years yet, and it's like the two spans of a bridge building out toward each other. Once they're joined, it will have the strength of Gibraltar—but that will take three years yet. In the meantime I'm the Atlas that's planted like a false pier in the stream. Holding both ends."

"More hell-paving!" scorned the doctor. "Let it crash!" He said this quite unfeelingly.

"But it isn't myself alone that would crash," explained George miserably. "A lot of people, widows and wage-earners and small investors generally, have put money in our company. Our stock and our bonds have been peddled through the banks to the little people who can't afford to Jose and who have trusted their pitiful all in the