ve points, bid by these
half-crazed speculators, while Page eyed Simmons.

Two tigers of finance, cool, calculating, merciless!

The jam about the pole grew worse. A screaming, pushing, mad mass of
beings, insane with greed!

Some on top, some under, and all cursing, yelling, a writhing monster,
all heads and hands, the like of which can nowhere else be found. Thirty
was bid, then thirty-two, four, six, eight!

Then forty!

And then Page, calculating to a nicety, leaped in!

In an instant, almost, the price fell twenty points, for Simmons, quick
to see his enemy's offer to sell, lost his nerve and offered blocks of
ten and twenty thousand shares down, down at any price!

And the scared bears, as quick as he to see the tide had turned, joined
the downward bidding.

But Page had sold!

Winn and Jess were saved!

The bubble had burst!

Conscience, as in all great climaxes of human feeling, was a factor in
the crash; for Simmons, knowing that he had once wronged and robbed
Page, intuitively felt that a revenge was coming, and to save what he
could out of the wrecked plot, joined the insane selling. For once in
his life he played the coward.

After the financial delirium was over, there was a scene between him and
Weston, over which it were best to draw the veil.

A more hilarious episode, however, occurred in Page's office, when all
met there after the exchange closed.

"I didn't win out as I hoped," Page said to the rest, "for the market
broke like an egg-shell. I unloaded the four thousand at an average of
twenty, however, and had the pleasure of seeing Simmons gnash his false
teeth and shake his fist at me, which was worth as much more." Then
turning to Jess he added: "How did you enjoy the pow-wow?"

Jess smiled.

"I've seen a passel o' hungry hogs squealin' an' pawin' over a trough,
an' two dogs fightin' over a bone. I've seen a cage o' monkeys all mad
an' makin' the fur fly, an' if the whole kit 'n' boodle had been put in
a pen 'n' sot a-goin', it wouldn't 'a' ekalled the fracas I've seen
to-day. How any on 'em got out 'thout broken bones is more'n I kin see.
I'd 'a' gin a hundred to 'a' held the nozzle o' a fire-engine hose 'n'
squirted water on 'em."

"How would you have enjoyed being among them?" put in Nickerson, to whom
the old man with his grotesque raiment and speech was a source of
merriment.

"I wouldn't 'a' sot foot 'mong that crowd o' loony-tics fer a hundred
dollars," answered Jess