when the cable comes down?"
called the foreman after him as he started away.

"She'll hold," said Bannon.

CHAPTER XV

Before December was half gone--and while the mild autumn weather serenely
held, in spite of weather predictions and of storm signs about the sun and
days of blue haze and motionless trees--the newspaper-reading public knew
all the outside facts about the fight in wheat, and they knew it to be the
biggest fight since the days of "Old Hutch" and the two-dollar-a-bushel
record. Indeed, there were men who predicted that the two-dollar mark
would be reached before Christmas, for the Clique of speculators who held
the floor were buying, buying, buying--millions upon millions of dollars
were slipping through their ready hands, and still there was no
hesitation, no weakening. Until the small fry had dropped out the deal had
been confused; it was too big, there were too many interests involved, to
make possible a clear understanding, but now it was settling down into a
grim fight between the biggest men on the Board. The Clique were buying
wheat--Page & Company were selling it to them: if it should come out, on
the thirty-first of December, that Page & Company had sold more than they
could deliver, the Clique would be winners; but if it should have been
delivered, to the last bushel, the corner would be broken, and the Clique
would drop from sight as so many reckless men had dropped before. The
readers of every great newspaper in the country were watching Page &
Company. The general opinion was that they could not do it, that such an
enormous quantity of grain could not be delivered and registered in time,
even if it were to be had.

But the public overlooked, indeed it had no means of knowing, one
important fact. The members of the Clique were new men in the public eye.
They represented apparently unlimited capital, but they were young, eager,
overstrung; flushed with the prospect of success, they were talking for
publication. They believed they knew of every bushel in the country that
was to be had, and they allowed themselves to say that they had already
bought more than this. If this were true, Page was beaten. But it was not
true. The young men of the Clique had forgotten that Page had trained
agents in every part of the world; that he had alliances with great
railroad and steamer lines, that he had a weather bureau and a system of
crop reports that outdid those of the United States Government, that