ne source of help alone Jadwin left untried. Sorely tempted, he
nevertheless kept himself from involving his wife's money in the
hazard. Laura, in her own name, was possessed of a little fortune; sure
as he was of winning, Jadwin none the less hesitated from seeking an
auxiliary here. He felt it was a matter of pride. He could not bring
himself to make use of a woman's succour.

But his entire personal fortune now swung in the balance. It was the
last fight, the supreme attempt--the final consummate assault, and the
thrill of a victory more brilliant, more conclusive, more decisive than
any he had ever known, vibrated in Jadwin's breast, as he went to and
fro in Jackson, Adams, and La Salle streets all through that day of the
eleventh.

But he knew the danger--knew just how terrible was to be the grapple.
Once that same day a certain detail of business took him near to the
entrance of the Floor. Though he did not so much as look inside the
doors, he could not but hear the thunder of the Pit; and even in that
moment of confidence, his great triumph only a few hours distant,
Jadwin, for the instant, stood daunted. The roar was appalling, the
whirlpool was again unchained, the maelstrom was again unleashed. And
during the briefest of seconds he could fancy that the familiar bellow
of its swirling, had taken on another pitch. Out of that hideous
turmoil, he imagined, there issued a strange unwonted note; as it were,
the first rasp and grind of a new avalanche just beginning to stir, a
diapason more profound than any he had yet known, a hollow distant
bourdon as of the slipping and sliding of some almighty and chaotic
power.

It was the Wheat, the Wheat! It was on the move again. From the farms
of Illinois and Iowa, from the ranches of Kansas and Nebraska, from all
the reaches of the Middle West, the Wheat, like a tidal wave, was
rising, rising. Almighty, blood-brother to the earthquake, coeval with
the volcano and the whirlwind, that gigantic world-force, that colossal
billow, Nourisher of the Nations, was swelling and advancing.

There in the Pit its first premonitory eddies already swirled and spun.
If even the first ripples of the tide smote terribly upon the heart,
what was it to be when the ocean itself burst through, on its eternal
way from west to east? For an instant came clear vision. What were
these shouting, gesticulating men of the Board of Trade, these brokers,
traders, and speculators? It was not these he