lay on the line

So how did Paul do in the clutch—when it mattered, when all eyes were on him, when the fate of the Republican Party lay on the line?

Most unhappily for itself Byzantium lay on the line of division between the eastern provinces, where Pescennius Niger had been proclaimed, and the Illyrian provinces, where Severus had assumed the imperial style.

These he kindly promised to me, even authorizing me to get them at the place where he had deposited them, and which lay on the line of my daily tramp to the ruins.

The policy of the Corning Foundation is to demand something very definite in return for the money they lay on the line.

Two unfortunate small villages which lay on the line of march were surrounded and the inhabitants massacred.