ad
none to deliver. A few bulls who owned it at five and six started a
story that a corner had been engineered, and predicted that it would go
to thirty inside a week. And when the gong sounded that day, and the
market closed with Rockhaven at fifteen and one-quarter bid and sixteen
asked, a few of the fur-coated liars looked askance at one another and
went out and drank liberally to keep their courage up.

And that night Weston and Simmons held another conference. It was a
vital one; for before it closed some ten thousand shares of general
securities Weston & Hill either owned or held in trust passed into
Simmons's possession, and when the two conspirators separated, one was
richer by nearly two hundred thousand dollars, based on the market price
of these securities, and the other gloating over the prospective
robbery of his hated partner.

But a halt came the next day, for Simmons bid sixteen for a block of
Rockhaven, a few conservative bulls unloaded and the price dropped two
points, while the bears took courage.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE BUBBLE RISES

It was early dawn when Winn stepped from his train and into the
ceaseless babel of the city. Market wagons were crowding the streets,
the army of workers hurrying in every direction, newsboys shouting,
humanity elbowing and pushing, draymen seemingly ready to run over
him,--and this was his welcome back into the monster hive he had left
three months before. What a contrast to Rockhaven!

Then to a hotel, a bath, a barber; and, finally, when he had made
himself somewhat more in keeping with the well-groomed if heartless city
folk that he must now meet, he secluded himself in a corner of a dining
room, where he breakfasted behind a morning paper. He first turned to
the stock page, fully expecting to see the name "Rockhaven" staring him
in the face; but he did not. Then his eye ran down the column of
quotations until, among the unlisted securities, it rested on
"Rockhaven," thirteen bid and fourteen asked. And strange to say, the
thirteen seemed significant; and now he looked elsewhere, feeling sure
that he would find the Rockhaven Granite's Company's advertisement, but
failed. There were others equally alluring, and to his mind equally
deceptive,--oil, mining, development, building, and every other sort of
scheme confronting him, each promising safe and sure returns and
assuring the reader in fervid language that "now is the time to invest."
And so eager were th