ister. "Never mind,
Aileen," commented Cowperwood, with that iron determination that brooks
no defeat. "We will be a part of this. Don't fret. You will have
everything you want in Chicago, and more besides."

There was tingling over his fingers, into the reins, into the horses, a
mysterious vibrating current that was his chemical product, the
off-giving of his spirit battery that made his hired horses prance like
children. They chafed and tossed their heads and snorted. Aileen was
fairly bursting with hope and vanity and longing. Oh, to be Mrs. Frank
Algernon Cowperwood here in Chicago, to have a splendid mansion, to
have her cards of invitation practically commands which might not be
ignored!

"Oh, dear!" she sighed to herself, mentally. "If only it were all
true--now."

It is thus that life at its topmost toss irks and pains. Beyond is
ever the unattainable, the lure of the infinite with its infinite ache.

"Oh, life! oh, youth! oh, hope! oh, years! Oh pain-winged fancy,
beating forth with fears."

Chapter IV

Peter Laughlin & Co.

The partnership which Cowperwood eventually made with an old-time Board
of Trade operator, Peter Laughlin, was eminently to his satisfaction.
Laughlin was a tall, gaunt speculator who had spent most of his living
days in Chicago, having come there as a boy from western Missouri. He
was a typical Chicago Board of Trade operator of the old school, having
an Andrew Jacksonish countenance, and a Henry Clay--Davy
Crockett--"Long John" Wentworth build of body.

Cowperwood from his youth up had had a curious interest in quaint
characters, and he was interesting to them; they "took" to him. He
could, if he chose to take the trouble, fit himself in with the odd
psychology of almost any individual. In his early peregrinations in La
Salle Street he inquired after clever traders on 'change, and then gave
them one small commission after another in order to get acquainted.
Thus he stumbled one morning on old Peter Laughlin, wheat and corn
trader, who had an office in La Salle Street near Madison, and who did
a modest business gambling for himself and others in grain and Eastern
railway shares. Laughlin was a shrewd, canny American, originally,
perhaps, of Scotch extraction, who had all the traditional American
blemishes of uncouthness, tobacco-chewing, profanity, and other small
vices. Cowperwood could tell from looking at him that he must have a
fund of information concern