sible, inexplicable magnet that lifted it higher and higher, for
all the strenuous efforts of the Bears to drag it down.

A feeling of nervousness began to prevail. The small traders, who had
been wild to sell short during the first days of the movement, began on
Monday to cover a little here and there.

"Now," declared Jadwin that night, "now's the time to open up all along
the line hard. If we start her with a rush to-morrow morning, she'll go
to a dollar all by herself."

Tuesday morning, therefore, the Gretry-Converse traders bought another
five million bushels. The price under this stimulus went up with the
buoyancy of a feather. The little shorts, more and more uneasy, and
beginning to cover by the scores, forced it up even higher.

The nervousness of the "crowd" increased. Perhaps, after all, Crookes
was not so omnipotent. Perhaps, after all, the Unknown Bull had another
fight in him. Then the "outsiders" came into the market. All in a
moment all the traders were talking "higher prices." Everybody now was
as eager to buy as, a week before, they had been eager to sell. The
price went up by convulsive bounds. Crookes dared not buy, dared not
purchase the wheat to make good his promises of delivery, for fear of
putting up the price on himself higher still. Dismayed, chagrined, and
humiliated, he and his clique sat back inert, watching the tremendous
reaction, hoping against hope that the market would break again.

But now it became difficult to get wheat at all. All of a sudden nobody
was selling. The buyers in the Pit commenced to bid against each other,
offering a dollar and two cents. The wheat did not "come out." They bid
a dollar two and a half, a dollar two and five-eighths; still no wheat.
Frantic, they shook their fingers in the very faces of Landry Court and
the Gretry traders, shouting: "A dollar, two and seven-eighths! A
dollar, three! Three and an eighth! A quarter! Three-eighths! A half!"
But the others shook their heads. Except on extraordinary advances of a
whole cent at a time, there was no wheat for sale.

At the last-named price Crookes acknowledged defeat. Somewhere in his
big machine a screw had been loose. Somehow he had miscalculated. So
long as he and his associates sold and sold and sold, the price would
go down. The instant they tried to cover there was no wheat for sale,
and the price leaped up again with an elasticity that no power could
control.

He saw now that he and his follower