there alone reading till
eleven and twelve. But she's afraid, too, of the effect upon him. He's
getting so absorbed. He don't care for literature now as he did once,
or was beginning to when Laura used to read to him; and he never thinks
of his Sunday-school. And then, too, if you're to believe Mr. Cressler,
there's a chance that he may lose if he is speculating again."

But Landry stoutly protested:

"Well, don't think for one moment that Mr. Curtis Jadwin is going to
let any one get the better of him. There's no man--no, nor gang of
men--could down him. He's head and shoulders above the biggest of them
down there. I tell you he's Napoleonic. Yes, sir, that's what he is,
Napoleonic, to say the least. Page," he declared, solemnly, "he's the
greatest man I've ever known."

Very soon after this it was no longer a secret to Laura Jadwin that her
husband had gone back to the wheat market, and that, too, with such
impetuosity, such eagerness, that his rush had carried him to the very
heart's heart of the turmoil.

He was now deeply involved; his influence began to be felt. Not an
important move on the part of the "Unknown Bull," the nameless
mysterious stranger that was not duly noted and discussed by the entire
world of La Salle Street.

Almost his very first move, carefully guarded, executed with
profoundest secrecy, had been to replace the five million bushels sold
to Liverpool by five million more of the May option. This was in
January, and all through February and all through the first days of
March, while the cry for American wheat rose, insistent and vehement,
from fifty cities and centres of eastern Europe; while the jam of men
in the Wheat Pit grew ever more frantic, ever more furious, and while
the impassive hand on the great dial over the floor of the Board rose,
resistless, till it stood at eighty-seven, he bought steadily,
gathering in the wheat, calling for it, welcoming it, receiving full in
the face and with opened arms the cataract that poured in upon the Pit
from Iowa and Nebraska, Minnesota and Dakota, from the dwindling bins
of Illinois and the fast-emptying elevators of Kansas and Missouri.

Then, squarely in the midst of the commotion, at a time when Curtis
Jadwin owned some ten million bushels of May wheat, fell the Government
report on the visible supply.

"Well," said Jadwin, "what do you think of it?"

He and Gretry were in the broker's private room in the offices of
Gretry, Converse & Co