looked like a million and a half. Then the
three lost their heads; they held the corner just a fraction of a month
too long, and when the time came that the three were forced to take
profits, they found that they were unable to close out their immense
holdings without breaking the price. In two days wheat that they had
held at a dollar and ten cents collapsed to sixty. The two Milwaukee
men were ruined, and two-thirds of Cressler's immense fortune vanished
like a whiff of smoke.

But he had learned his lesson. Never since then had he speculated.
Though keeping his seat on the Board, he had confined himself to
commission trading, uninfluenced by fluctuations in the market. And he
was never wearied of protesting against the evil and the danger of
trading in margins. Speculation he abhorred as the small-pox, believing
it to be impossible to corner grain by any means or under any
circumstances. He was accustomed to say: "It can't be done; first, for
the reason that there is a great harvest of wheat somewhere in the
world for every month in the year; and, second, because the smart man
who runs the corner has every other smart man in the world against him.
And, besides, it's wrong; the world's food should not be at the mercy
of the Chicago wheat pit."

As the party filed in through the wicket, the other young man who had
come with Landry Court managed to place himself next to Laura. Meeting
her eyes, he murmured:

"Ah, you did not wear them after all. My poor little flowers."

But she showed him a single American Beauty, pinned to the shoulder of
her gown beneath her cape.

"Yes, Mr. Corthell," she answered, "one. I tried to select the
prettiest, and I think I succeeded--don't you? It was hard to choose."

"Since you have worn it, it is the prettiest," he answered.

He was a slightly built man of about twenty-eight or thirty; dark,
wearing a small, pointed beard, and a mustache that he brushed away
from his lips like a Frenchman. By profession he was an artist,
devoting himself more especially to the designing of stained windows.
In this, his talent was indisputable. But he was by no means dependent
upon his profession for a living, his parents--long since dead--having
left him to the enjoyment of a very considerable fortune. He had a
beautiful studio in the Fine Arts Building, where he held receptions
once every two months, or whenever he had a fine piece of glass to
expose. He had travelled, read, studied, occasion