s in his pockets, he leisurely crossed
the floor, and sat down in one of the chairs that were ranged in files
upon the floor in front of the telegraph enclosure. He scrutinised
again the despatches and orders that he held in his hands; then, having
fixed them in his memory, tore them into very small bits, looking
vaguely about the room, developing his plan of campaign for the morning.

In a sense Landry Court had a double personality. Away from the
neighbourhood and influence of La Salle Street, he was
"rattle-brained," absent-minded, impractical, and easily excited, the
last fellow in the world to be trusted with any business
responsibility. But the thunder of the streets around the Board of
Trade, and, above all, the movement and atmosphere of the floor itself
awoke within him a very different Landry Court; a whole new set of
nerves came into being with the tap of the nine-thirty gong, a whole
new system of brain machinery began to move with the first figure
called in the Pit. And from that instant until the close of the
session, no floor trader, no broker's clerk nor scalper was more alert,
more shrewd, or kept his head more surely than the same young fellow
who confused his social engagements for the evening of the same day.
The Landry Court the Dearborn girls knew was a far different young man
from him who now leaned his elbows on the arms of the chair upon the
floor of the Board, and, his eyes narrowing, his lips tightening, began
to speculate upon what was to be the temper of the Pit that morning.

Meanwhile the floor was beginning to fill up. Over in the railed-in
space, where the hundreds of telegraph instruments were in place, the
operators were arriving in twos and threes. They hung their hats and
ulsters upon the pegs in the wall back of them, and in linen coats, or
in their shirt-sleeves, went to their seats, or, sitting upon their
tables, called back and forth to each other, joshing, cracking jokes.
Some few addressed themselves directly to work, and here and there the
intermittent clicking of a key began, like a diligent cricket busking
himself in advance of its mates.

From the corridors on the ground floor up through the south doors came
the pit traders in increasing groups. The noise of footsteps began to
echo from the high vaulting of the roof. A messenger boy crossed the
floor chanting an unintelligible name.

The groups of traders gradually converged upon the corn and wheat pits,
and on the step