, tight-drawn
band across his temples.

"Smoking too much, I guess," murmured Jadwin. But he knew this was not
the reason, and as he spoke, there smote across his face the first
indefinite sensation of an unnamed fear.

He gave a quick, short breath, and straightened himself, passing his
hands over his face.

"What the deuce," he muttered, "does this mean?"

For a long moment he remained sitting upright in bed, looking from wall
to wall of the room. He felt a little calmer. He shrugged his shoulders
impatiently.

"Look here," he said to the opposite wall, "I guess I'm not a
schoolgirl, to have nerves at this late date. High time to get to
sleep, if I'm to mix things with Crookes to-morrow."

But he could not sleep. While the city woke to its multitudinous life
below his windows, while the grey light of morning drowned the yellow
haze from the gas jet that came through the transom, while the "early
call" alarms rang in neighbouring rooms, Curtis Jadwin lay awake,
staring at the ceiling, now concentrating his thoughts upon the vast
operation in which he found himself engaged, following out again all
its complexities, its inconceivable ramifications, or now puzzling over
the inexplicable numbness, the queer, dull weight that descended upon
his brain so soon as he allowed its activity to relax.

By five o'clock he found it intolerable to remain longer in bed; he
rose, bathed, dressed, ordered his breakfast, and, descending to the
office of the hotel, read the earliest editions of the morning papers
for half an hour.

Then, at last, as he sat in the corner of the office deep in an
armchair, the tired shoulders began to droop, the wearied head to nod.
The paper slipped from his fingers, his chin sank upon his collar.

To his ears the early clamour of the street, the cries of newsboys, the
rattle of drays came in a dull murmur. It seemed to him that very far
off a great throng was forming. It was menacing, shouting. It stirred,
it moved, it was advancing. It came galloping down the street, shouting
with insensate fury; now it was at the corner, now it burst into the
entrance of the hotel. Its clamour was deafening, but intelligible. For
a thousand, a million, forty million voices were shouting in cadence:

"Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."

Jadwin woke abruptly, half starting from his chair. The morning sun was
coming in through the windows; the clock above the hotel desk was
striking seven, and a waiter st