oloured
feet and iridescent breasts, strutted and fluttered, pecking at the
handfuls of wheat that a porter threw them from the windows of the
floor of the Board.

"Well," repeated Jadwin, shifting with a movement of his lips his unlit
cigar to the other corner of his mouth, "well, what do you think of it?"

The broker, intent upon the figures and statistics, replied only by an
indefinite movement of the head.

"Why, Sam," observed Jadwin, looking up from the paper, "there's less
than a hundred million bushels in the farmers' hands.... That's awfully
small. Sam, that's awfully small."

"It ain't, as you might say, colossal," admitted Gretry.

There was a long silence while the two men studied the report still
further. Gretry took a pamphlet of statistics from a pigeon-hole of his
desk, and compared certain figures with those mentioned in the report.

Outside the rain swept against the windows with the subdued rustle of
silk. A newsboy raised a Gregorian chant as he went down the street.

"By George, Sam," Jadwin said again, "do you know that a whole pile of
that wheat has got to go to Europe before July? How have the shipments
been?"

"About five millions a week."

"Why, think of that, twenty millions a month, and it's--let's see,
April, May, June, July--four months before a new crop. Eighty million
bushels will go out of the country in the next four months--eighty
million out of less than a hundred millions."

"Looks that way," answered Gretry.

"Here," said Jadwin, "let's get some figures. Let's get a squint on the
whole situation. Got a 'Price Current' here? Let's find out what the
stocks are in Chicago. I don't believe the elevators are exactly
bursting, and, say," he called after the broker, who had started for
the front office, "say, find out about the primary receipts, and the
Paris and Liverpool stocks. Bet you what you like that Paris and
Liverpool together couldn't show ten million to save their necks."

In a few moments Gretry was back again, his hands full of pamphlets and
"trade" journals.

By now the offices were quite deserted. The last clerk had gone home.
Without, the neighbourhood was emptying rapidly. Only a few stragglers
hurried over the glistening sidewalks; only a few lights yet remained
in the facades of the tall, grey office buildings. And in the widening
silence the cooing of the pigeons on the ledges and window-sills of the
Board of Trade Building made itself heard with increas