too. By God, the
poor old boy won't go hungry again if I know it! But if I lay my hands
on Scannel--if we catch him in the corner--holy, suffering Moses, but
I'll make him squeal!"

Gretry nodded, to say he understood and approved.

"I guess you've got him," he remarked. "Well, I must get to bed. Good
night, J."

"Good night, Sam. See you in the morning."

And before the door of the room was closed, Jadwin was back at the
table again. Once more, painfully, toilfully, he went over his plans,
retesting, altering, recombining, his hands full of lists, of
despatches, and of endless columns of memoranda. Occasionally he
murmured fragments of sentences to himself. "H'm ... I must look out
for that.... They can't touch us there.... The annex of that Nickel
Plate elevator will hold--let's see ... half a million.... If I buy the
grain within five days after arrival I've got to pay storage, which is,
let's see--three-quarters of a cent times eighty thousand...."

An hour passed. At length Jadwin pushed back from the table, drank a
glass of ice water, and rose, stretching.

"Lord, I must get some sleep," he muttered.

He threw off his clothes and went to bed, but even as he composed
himself to sleep, the noises of the street in the awakening city
invaded the room through the chink of the window he had left open. The
noises were vague. They blended easily into a far-off murmur; they came
nearer; they developed into a cadence:

"Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."

Jadwin roused up. He had just been dropping off to sleep. He rose and
shut the window, and again threw himself down. He was weary to death;
not a nerve of his body that did not droop and flag. His eyes closed
slowly. Then, all at once, his whole body twitched sharply in a sudden
spasm, a simultaneous recoil of every muscle. His heart began to beat
rapidly, his breath failed him. Broad awake, he sat up in bed.

"H'm!" he muttered. "That was a start--must have been dreaming, surely."

Then he paused, frowning, his eyes narrowing; he looked to and fro
about the room, lit by the subdued glow that came in through the
transom from a globe in the hall outside. Slowly his hand went to his
forehead.

With almost the abruptness of a blow, that strange, indescribable
sensation had returned to his head. It was as though he were struggling
with a fog in the interior of his brain; or again it was a numbness, a
weight, or sometimes it had more of the feeling of a heavy