"May wheat sold to Burbank & Co.," "May oats
sold to Matthewson and Knight," "Wheat sold to Gretry, Converse & Co.,"
began to echo from wall to wall of the almost deserted room.

A cat, grey and striped, and wearing a dog collar of nickel and red
leather, issued from the coat-room and picked her way across the floor.
Evidently she was in a mood of the most ingratiating friendliness, and
as one after another of the departing traders spoke to her, raised her
tail in the air and arched her back against the legs of the empty
chairs. The janitor put in an appearance, lowering the tall colored
windows with a long rod. A noise of hammering and the scrape of saws
began to issue from a corner where a couple of carpenters tinkered
about one of the sample tables.

Then at last even the settlement clerks took themselves off. At once
there was a great silence, broken only by the harsh rasp of the
carpenters' saws and the voice of the janitor exchanging jokes with the
washerwomen. The sound of footsteps in distant quarters re-echoed as if
in a church.

The washerwomen invaded the floor, spreading soapy and steaming water
before them. Over by the sample tables a negro porter in shirt-sleeves
swept entire bushels of spilled wheat, crushed, broken, and sodden,
into his dust pans.

The day's campaign was over. It was past two o'clock. On the great dial
against the eastern wall the indicator stood--sentinel fashion--at
ninety-three. Not till the following morning would the whirlpool, the
great central force that spun the Niagara of wheat in its grip, thunder
and bellow again.

Later on even the washerwomen, even the porter and janitor, departed.
An unbroken silence, the peacefulness of an untroubled calm, settled
over the place. The rays of the afternoon sun flooded through the west
windows in long parallel shafts full of floating golden motes. There
was no sound; nothing stirred. The floor of the Board of Trade was
deserted. Alone, on the edge of the abandoned Wheat Pit, in a spot
where the sunlight fell warmest--an atom of life, lost in the immensity
of the empty floor--the grey cat made her toilet, diligently licking
the fur on the inside of her thigh, one leg, as if dislocated, thrust
into the air above her head.

IV

In the front parlor of the Cresslers' house a little company was
gathered--Laura Dearborn and Page, Mrs. Wessels, Mrs. Cressler, and
young Miss Gretry, an awkward, plain-faced girl of about nineteen,
dr