ected the rally to begin
at the stroke of the gong the next morning. The men who bought stocks
in the closing hour were sure of this.

They rose to curse the weather. For the weather always affects
speculation. Wall Street is superstitious. The proud intellect that
struts the floor of the Exchange and scorns the powers of his feebler
fellow-men carries secretly a horse chestnut in his pocket for luck.
Without an exception all these great men believe in signs and wonders,
in witches, palmists, spells and hoodoos.

Weather always gets on their nerves. Half the fluctuations of stocks
under normal conditions of trade are purely the results of the mental
states of the men who buy and sell.

The doctor rose early with a new hope filling his heart which no cloud
could obscure. He watched Harriet pour his coffee at breakfast with his
old-time smile of good cheer playing about his fine mouth.

Stuart was sleeping late. He was up until one o'clock writing a reply
to a peculiarly venomous attack on his integrity which a morning paper
had printed. The writer had boldly accused him of being the hired tool
of the group of financial cut-throats who were coining millions out of
the ruin of others in the destruction of public faith.

His reply was simple and his concluding paragraph was unanswerable,
except by an epithet.

"My business is the enforcement of justice. I am the servant of the
people. If Wall Street can not stand the enforcement of law, so much
the worse for the Street. It's no affair of mine. I didn't make the
laws of the State any more than I made the law of gravitation. Nor did
I write the Ten Commandments, but I have an abiding faith that they
will stand when the last stone in the Stock Exchange building shall
have crumbled into dust. I refuse to believe that the only way to save
Wall Street is by a sworn officer of the law compounding a felony."

The doctor hurried down town to the office of a friend on Pine Street,
an old-fashioned banker and broker whose name had always stood for
honesty and fair dealing and conservative business. It was half an hour
before the Stock Exchange opened but the dingy little office was packed
with an excited crowd of customers. They all talked in low tones as if
fearing the spirits of the air that hovered near. An eager group leaned
over the bulletin from the London market. London was up half a point.
The credulous were pleased. It was a good omen. The pessimists scoffed.

"Rigge