into the coals, absorbed, abstracted, "I think that I am
going to be very happy here."

III

On a certain Monday morning, about a month later, Curtis Jadwin
descended from his office in the Rookery Building, and turning
southward, took his way toward the brokerage and commission office of
Gretry, Converse and Co., on the ground floor of the Board of Trade
Building, only a few steps away.

It was about nine o'clock; the weather was mild, the sun shone. La
Salle Street swarmed with the multitudinous life that seethed about the
doors of the innumerable offices of brokers and commission men of the
neighbourhood. To the right, in the peristyle of the Illinois Trust
Building, groups of clerks, of messengers, of brokers, of clients, and
of depositors formed and broke incessantly. To the left, where the
facade of the Board of Trade blocked the street, the activity was
astonishing, and in and out of the swing doors of its entrance streamed
an incessant tide of coming and going. All the life of the
neighbourhood seemed to centre at this point--the entrance of the Board
of Trade. Two currents that trended swiftly through La Salle and
Jackson streets, and that fed, or were fed by, other tributaries that
poured in through Fifth Avenue and through Clarke and Dearborn streets,
met at this point--one setting in, the other out. The nearer the
currents the greater their speed. Men--mere flotsam in the flood--as
they turned into La Salle Street from Adams or from Monroe, or even
from as far as Madison, seemed to accelerate their pace as they
approached. At the Illinois Trust the walk became a stride, at the
Rookery the stride was almost a trot. But at the corner of Jackson
Street, the Board of Trade now merely the width of the street away, the
trot became a run, and young men and boys, under the pretence of
escaping the trucks and wagons of the cobbles, dashed across at a
veritable gallop, flung themselves panting into the entrance of the
Board, were engulfed in the turmoil of the spot, and disappeared with a
sudden fillip into the gloom of the interior.

Often Jadwin had noted the scene, and, unimaginative though he was, had
long since conceived the notion of some great, some resistless force
within the Board of Trade Building that held the tide of the streets
within its grip, alternately drawing it in and throwing it forth.
Within there, a great whirlpool, a pit of roaring waters spun and
thundered, sucking in the life tid