esk, and held it a
moment before him.

"Good-bye," he said, apostrophising the bit of paper. "Good-bye. I
ne'er shall look upon your like again."

Gretry did not laugh.

"Huh!" he grunted. "You'll look upon a hatful of them before the month
is out."

That same morning Landry Court found himself in the corridor on the
ground floor of the Board of Trade about nine o'clock. He had just come
out of the office of Gretry, Converse & Co., where he and the other Pit
traders for the house had been receiving their orders for the day.

As he was buying a couple of apples at the news stand at the end of the
corridor, Semple and a young Jew named Hirsch, Pit traders for small
firms in La Salle Street, joined him.

"Hello, Court, what do you know?"

"Hello, Barry Semple! Hello, Hirsch!" Landry offered the halves of his
second apple, and the three stood there a moment, near the foot of the
stairs, talking and eating their apples from the points of their
penknives.

"I feel sort of seedy this morning," Semple observed between mouthfuls.
"Was up late last night at a stag. A friend of mine just got back from
Europe, and some of the boys were giving him a little dinner. He was
all over the shop, this friend of mine; spent most of his time in
Constantinople; had some kind of newspaper business there. It seems
that it's a pretty crazy proposition, Turkey and the Sultan and all
that. He said that there was nearly a row over the 'Higgins-Pasha'
incident, and that the British agent put it pretty straight to the
Sultan's secretary. My friend said Constantinople put him in mind of a
lot of opera bouffe scenery that had got spilled out in the mud. Say,
Court, he said the streets were dirtier than the Chicago streets."

"Oh, come now," said Hirsch.

"Fact! And the dogs! He told us he knows now where all the yellow dogs
go to when they die."

"But say," remarked Hirsch, "what is that about the Higgins-Pasha
business? I thought that was over long ago."

"Oh, it is," answered Semple easily. He looked at his watch. "I guess
it's about time to go up, pretty near half-past nine."

The three mounted the stairs, mingling with the groups of floor traders
who, in steadily increasing numbers, had begun to move in the same
direction. But on the way Hirsch was stopped by his brother.

"Hey, I got that box of cigars for you."

Hirsch paused. "Oh! All right," he said, then he added: "Say, how about
that Higgins-Pasha affair? You remember that