and keep the bank in going condition. In the latter part of 1930 the situation had become critical, and its officers well understood that unless an additional loan of around $200,000 could be secured, the bank could not keep open. Negotiations and arrangements, however, were on foot for this loan, and on December 27 and 29, when the deposits which resulted in the balance in controversy were made, the officers of the bank, though realizing the gravity and seriousness of the situation, really believed in good faith that arrangements could be made so that the bank could go on. In good faith they kept the bank open, receiving deposits and honoring checks and drafts as they came in, and it was only on December 30, when they learnedwere checks. These checks, drawn some on the Planters' Bank, some on out of town banks, were collected mainly by the Memphis Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, to which the Planters' Bank was indebted, and when the bank closed its doors, that bank credited these collections on the indebtedness.
The District Judge, finding the agreement invalid as in effect the creation of an unlawful preference in event of insolvency of one general depositor over others, denied it effect, either defensively or by way of affirmative relief, and ordering it vacated and set aside, directed the company to deliver the securities to the receiver. On the affirmative claim of the company that because of the hopeless and irretrievable insolvency of the bank when the deposits were