sh than for years
past. Thundering, its vortex smoking, it sent its whirling far out over
the country, from ocean to ocean, sweeping the wheat into its currents,
sucking it in, and spewing it out again in the gigantic pulses of its
ebb and flow.

And he, Jadwin, who knew its every eddy, who could foretell its every
ripple, was out of it, out of it. Inactive, he sat there idle while the
clamour of the Pit swelled daily louder, and while other men, men of
little minds, of narrow imaginations, perversely, blindly shut their
eyes to the swelling of its waters, neglecting the chances which he
would have known how to use with such large, such vast results. That
mysterious event which long ago he felt was preparing, was not yet
consummated. The great Fact, the great Result which was at last to
issue forth from all this turmoil was not yet achieved. Would it refuse
to come until a master hand, all powerful, all daring, gripped the
levers of the sluice gates that controlled the crashing waters of the
Pit? He did not know. Was it the moment for a chief?

Was this upheaval a revolution that called aloud for its Napoleon?
Would another, not himself, at last, seeing where so many shut their
eyes, step into the place of high command?

Jadwin chafed and fretted in his inaction. As the time when the house
party should break up drew to its close, his impatience harried him
like a gadfly. He took long drives over the lonely country roads, or
tramped the hills or the frozen lake, thoughtful, preoccupied. He still
held his seat upon the Board of Trade. He still retained his agents in
Europe. Each morning brought him fresh despatches, each evening's paper
confirmed his forecasts.

"Oh, I'm out of it for good and all," he assured his wife. "But I know
the man who could take up the whole jing-bang of that Crookes crowd in
one hand and"--his large fist swiftly knotted as he spoke the
words--"scrunch it up like an eggshell, by George."

Landry Court often entertained Page with accounts of the doings on the
Board of Trade, and about a fortnight after the Jadwins had returned to
their city home he called on her one evening and brought two or three
of the morning's papers.

"Have you seen this?" he asked. She shook her head.

"Well," he said, compressing his lips, and narrowing his eyes, "let me
tell you, we are having pretty--lively--times--down there on the Board
these days. The whole country is talking about it."

He read her certain