in him. The business hardened his heart, and
he took his profits as if by right of birth.

His wife he saw but seldom. Occasionally they breakfasted together; more
often they met at dinner. But that was all.

And now by June 11 the position was critical.

"The price broke to a dollar and twenty yesterday," said Gretry. "Just
think, we were at a dollar and a half a little while ago."

"And we'll be at two dollars in another ten days, I tell you."

"Do you know how we stand, 'J'?" said the broker gravely. "Do you know
how we stand financially? It's taken pretty nearly every cent of our
ready money to support this July market. Oh, we can figure out our paper
profits into the millions. We've got thirty, forty, fifty million
bushels of wheat that's worth over a dollar a bushel; but if we can't
sell it we're none the better off--and that wheat is costing us six
thousand dollars a day. Where's the money going to come from, old man?
You don't seem to realise that we are in a precarious condition. The
moment we can't give our boys buying orders, the moment we admit that we
can't buy all the wheat that's offered, there's the moment we bust."

"Well, we'll buy it," cried Jadwin. "I'll show those brutes. I'll
mortgage all my real estate, and I'll run up wheat so high before the
next two days that the Bank of England can't pull it down; then I'll
sell our long line, and with the profits of that I'll run it up again.
Two dollars! Why, it will be two-fifty before you know how it happened."

That day Jadwin placed as heavy a mortgage as the place would stand upon
every piece of real estate that he owned. He floated a number of
promissory notes, and taxed his credit to its farthest stretch. But sure
as he was of winning, Jadwin could, not bring himself to involve his
wife's money in the hazard, though his entire personal fortune swung in
the balance.

Jadwin knew the danger. The new harvest was coming in--the new harvest
of wheat--huge beyond all possibility of control; so vast that no money
could buy it. And from Liverpool and Paris cables had come in to Gretry
declining to buy wheat, though he had offered it cheaper than he had
ever done before.

* * * * *

On the morning of June 13, Gretry gave his orders to young Landry Court
and his other agents in the Pit, to do their best to keep the market up.
"You can buy each of you up to half a million bushels apiece. If that
don't keep the price up--