--of course not!" declared Mrs. Cressler joyfully. "That's
'J' all over. I might have known he'd have you if he set out to do it."

They were married on the last day of June of that summer in the
Episcopalian church. Immediately after the wedding the couple took the
train for Geneva Lake, where Jadwin had built a house for his bride.

_II.--A Corner in Wheat_

The months passed. Soon three years had gone by since the ceremony in
St. James's Church, and all that time the price of wheat had been
steadily going down. Heavy crops the world over had helped the decline.

Jadwin had been drawn into the troubled waters of the Pit, and was by
now "blooded to the game." It was in April that he decided that better
times and higher prices were coming for wheat, and announced his
intentions to Sam Gretry, his broker.

"Sam," he said, "the time is come for a great big chance. We've been
hammering wheat down and down and down till we've got it below the cost
of production, and now she won't go any further with all the hammering
in the world. The other fellows, the rest of the bear crowd, don't seem
to see it; but I see it. Before fall we're going to have higher prices.
Wheat is going up, and when it does I mean to be right there. I'm going
to _buy_. I'm going to buy September wheat, and I'm going to buy it
to-morrow--500,000 bushels of it; and if the market goes as I think it
will later on, I'm going to buy more. I'm going to boost this market
right through till the last bell rings, and from now on Curtis Jadwin
spells b-u-double l--bull."

"They'll slaughter you," said Gretry; "slaughter you in cold blood.
You're just one man against a gang--a gang of cut-throats. Those bears
have got millions and millions back of them. 'J,' you are either
Napoleonic, or--or a colossal idiot!"

All through the three years that had passed Jadwin had grown continually
richer. His real estate appreciated in value; rents went up. Every time
he speculated in wheat it was upon a larger scale, and every time he
won. Hitherto he had been a bear; now, after the talk with Gretry, he
had secretly "turned bull" with the suddenness of a strategist.

A marvellous golden luck followed Jadwin all that summer. The crops were
poor, the yield moderate.

Jadwin sold out in September, having made a fortune, and then, in a
single vast clutch, bought 3,000,000 bushels of the December option.

Never before had he ventured so deeply into the Pit.

One morning