and at the same time
he could fancy that the distant thunder of the Pit grew suddenly more
violent, taking on a sharper, shriller note. He looked at the tape. The
one-cent rise had been effected.

"You will hold out, will you, you brute?" muttered Jadwin. "See how you
like that now." He took out his watch. "You'll be running in to me in
just about ten minutes' time."

He turned about, and calling a clerk, gave orders to have Hargus found
and brought to him.

When the old fellow appeared Jadwin jumped up and gave him his hand as
he came slowly forward.

His rusty top hat was in his hand; from the breast pocket of his faded
and dirty frock coat a bundle of ancient newspapers protruded. His
shoestring tie straggled over his frayed shirt front, while at his
wrist one of his crumpled cuffs, detached from the sleeve, showed the
bare, thin wrist between cloth and linen, and encumbered the fingers in
which he held the unlit stump of a fetid cigar.

Evidently bewildered as to the cause of this summons, he looked up
perplexed at Jadwin as he came up, out of his dim, red-lidded eyes.

"Sit down, Hargus. Glad to see you," called Jadwin.

"Hey?"

The voice was faint and a little querulous.

"I say, sit down. Have a chair. I want to have a talk with you. You ran
a corner in wheat once yourself."

"Oh.... Wheat."

"Yes, your corner. You remember?"

"Yes. Oh, that was long ago. In seventy-eight it was--the September
option. And the Board made wheat in the cars 'regular.'"

His voice trailed off into silence, and he looked vaguely about on the
floor of the room, sucking in his cheeks, and passing the edge of one
large, osseous hand across his lips.

"Well, you lost all your money that time, I believe. Scannel, your
partner, sold out on you."

"Hey? It was in seventy-eight.... The secretary of the Board announced
our suspension at ten in the morning. If the Board had not voted to
make wheat in the cars 'regular'--"

He went on and on, in an impassive monotone, repeating, word for word,
the same phrases he had used for so long that they had lost all
significance.

"Well," broke in Jadwin, at last, "it was Scannel your partner, did for
you. Scannel, I say. You know, Dave Scannel."

The old man looked at him confusedly. Then, as the name forced itself
upon the atrophied brain, there flashed, for one instant, into the
pale, blurred eye, a light, a glint, a brief, quick spark of an old,
long-forgotten fire. It gleame