ly.

There was a long silence, while the cab rolled swiftly on its way.
"Well?" Oliver asked at last.

"I can imagine," said Montague, "how a man might intend to move a
certain stock, and think that he had the power, and yet find that he
was mistaken. There are so many forces, so many chances to be
considered--it seems to me you must be taking a risk."

Oliver laughed. "You talk like a child," was his reply. "Suppose that I
were in absolute control of a corporation, and that I chose to run it
for purposes of market manipulation, don't you think I might come
pretty near knowing what its stock was going to do?"

"Yes," said Montague, slowly, "if such a thing as that were
conceivable."

"If it were conceivable!" laughed his brother. "And now suppose that I
had a confidential man--a secretary, we'll say--and I paid him twenty
thousand a year, and he saw chances to make a hundred thousand in an
hour--don't you think he might conceivably try it?"

"Yes," said Montague, "he might. But where do you come in?"

"Well, if the man were going to do anything worth while, he'd need
capital, would he not? And he'd hardly dare to look for any money in
the Street, where a thousand eyes would be watching him. What more
natural than to look out for some person who is in Society and has the
ear of private parties with plenty of cash?"

And Montague sat in deep thought. "I see," he said slowly; "I see!"
Then, fixing his eyes upon Oliver, he exclaimed, earnestly, "One thing
more!"

"Don't ask me any more," protested the other. "I told you I was
pledged--"

"You must tell me this," said Montague. "Does Bobbie Walling know about
it?"

"He does not," was the reply. But Montague had known his brother long
and intimately, and he could read things in his eyes. He knew that that
was a lie. He had solved the mystery at last!

Montague knew that he had come to a parting of the ways. He did not
like this kind of thing--he had not come to New York to be a
stock-gambler. But what a difficult thing it would be to say so; and
how unfair it was to be confronted with such an issue, and compelled to
decide in a few minutes in a cab!

He had put himself in his brother's hands, and now he was under
obligations to him, which he could not pay off. Oliver had paid all his
expenses; he was doing everything for him. He had made all his
difficulties his own, and all in frankness and perfect trust--upon the
assumption that his brother would play the