-eighths.

Landry was beside himself. He had not foreseen this break. There was no
reckoning on that cursed "visible," and he still had 50,000 bushels to
dispose of. There was no telling now how low the price might sink. He
must act quickly, radically. He fought his way towards the Porteous
crowd, reached over the shoulder of the little Jew Grossmann, who stood
in his way, and thrust his hand almost into Paterson's face, shouting:

"'Sell fifty May at seven-eighths."

It was the last one of his unaccountable selling orders of the early
morning.

The other shook his head.

"'Sell fifty May at three-quarters."

Suddenly some instinct warned Landry that another break was coming. It
was in the very air around him. He could almost physically feel the
pressure of renewed avalanches of wheat crowding down the price.
Desperate, he grabbed Paterson by the shoulder.

"'Sell fifty May at five-eighths."

"Take it," vociferated the other, as though answering a challenge.

And in the heart of this confusion, in this downward rush of the price,
Luck, the golden goddess, passed with the flirt and flash of glittering
wings, and hardly before the ticker in Gretry's office had signalled
the decline, the memorandum of the trade was down upon Landry's card
and Curtis Jadwin stood pledged to deliver, before noon on the last day
of May, one million bushels of wheat into the hands of the
representatives of the great Bulls of the Board of Trade.

But by now the real business of the morning was over. The Pit knew it.
Grossmann, obstinate, hypnotized as it were by one idea, still stood in
his accustomed place on the upper edge of the Pit, and from time to
time, with the same despairing gesture, emitted his doleful outcry of
"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and three-quarters."

Nobody listened. The traders stood around in expectant attitudes,
looking into one another's faces, waiting for what they could not
exactly say; loath to leave the Pit lest something should "turn up" the
moment their backs were turned.

By degrees the clamour died away, ceased, began again irregularly, then
abruptly stilled. Here and there a bid was called, an offer made, like
the intermittent crack of small arms after the stopping of the
cannonade.

"'Sell five May at one-eighth."

"'Sell twenty at one-quarter."

"'Give one-eighth for May."

For an instant the shoutings were renewed. Then suddenly the gong
struck. The traders began slowly to leav