row between England and
Turkey. They tell me the British agent in Constantinople put it pretty
straight to the Sultan the other day."

The other was interested. "He did, hey?" he said. "The market hasn't
felt it, though. Guess there's nothing to it. But there's Kelly yonder.
He'd know. He's pretty thick with Porteous' men. Might ask him."

"You ask him and let me know. I got to go on the floor. It's nearly
time for the gong."

Hirsch's brother found Kelly in the centre of a group of settlement
clerks.

"Say, boy," he began, "you ought to know. They tell me there may be
trouble between England and Turkey over the Higgins-Pasha incident, and
that the British Foreign Office has threatened the Sultan with an
ultimatum. I can see the market if that's so."

"Nothing in it," retorted Kelly. "But I'll find out--to make sure, by
jingo."

Meanwhile Landry had gained the top of the stairs, and turning to the
right, passed through a great doorway, and came out upon the floor of
the Board of Trade.

It was a vast enclosure, lighted on either side by great windows of
coloured glass, the roof supported by thin iron pillars elaborately
decorated. To the left were the bulletin blackboards, and beyond these,
in the northwest angle of the floor, a great railed-in space where the
Western Union Telegraph was installed. To the right, on the other side
of the room, a row of tables, laden with neatly arranged paper bags
half full of samples of grains, stretched along the east wall from the
doorway of the public room at one end to the telephone room at the
other.

The centre of the floor was occupied by the pits. To the left and to
the front of Landry the provision pit, to the right the corn pit, while
further on at the north extremity of the floor, and nearly under the
visitors' gallery, much larger than the other two, and flanked by the
wicket of the official recorder, was the wheat pit itself.

Directly opposite the visitors' gallery, high upon the south wall a
great dial was affixed, and on the dial a marking hand that indicated
the current price of wheat, fluctuating with the changes made in the
Pit. Just now it stood at ninety-three and three-eighths, the closing
quotation of the preceding day.

As yet all the pits were empty. It was some fifteen minutes after nine.
Landry checked his hat and coat at the coat room near the north
entrance, and slipped into an old tennis jacket of striped blue
flannel. Then, hatless, his hand