t the farming communities of the "Middle West" there were no
longer purchases of buggies and parlour organs. Somewhere in other
remoter corners of the world the cheap wheat, that meant cheap bread,
made living easy and induced prosperity, but in the United States the
poverty of the farmer worked upward through the cogs and wheels of the
whole great machine of business. It was as though a lubricant had dried
up. The cogs and wheels worked slowly and with dislocations. Things
were a little out of joint. Wall Street stocks were down. In a word,
"times were bad." Thus for three years. It became a proverb on the
Chicago Board of Trade that the quickest way to make money was to sell
wheat short. One could with almost absolute certainty be sure of buying
cheaper than one had sold. And that peculiar, indefinite thing
known--among the most unsentimental men in the world--as "sentiment,"
prevailed more and more strongly in favour of low prices. "The
'sentiment,'" said the market reports, "was bearish"; and the traders,
speculators, eighth-chasers, scalpers, brokers, bucket-shop men, and
the like--all the world of La Salle Street--had become so accustomed to
these "Bear conditions," that it was hard to believe that they would
not continue indefinitely.

Jadwin, inevitably, had been again drawn into the troubled waters of
the Pit. Always, as from the very first, a Bear, he had once more
raided the market, and had once more been successful. Two months after
this raid he and Gretry planned still another coup, a deal of greater
magnitude than any they had previously hazarded. Laura, who knew very
little of her husband's affairs--to which he seldom alluded--saw by the
daily papers that at one stage of the affair the "deal" trembled to its
base.

But Jadwin was by now "blooded to the game." He no longer needed
Gretry's urging to spur him. He had developed into a strategist, bold,
of inconceivable effrontery, delighting in the shock of battle, never
more jovial, more daring than when under stress of the most merciless
attack. On this occasion, when the "other side" resorted to the usual
tactics to drive him from the Pit, he led on his enemies to make one
single false step. Instantly--disregarding Gretry's entreaties as to
caution--Jadwin had brought the vast bulk of his entire fortune to
bear, in the manner of a general concentrating his heavy artillery, and
crushed the opposition with appalling swiftness.

He issued from the grapple