winning one step at a time. But
he was very anxious; again and again he looked at his watch. At last he
said:

"I've got to go. It's just madness for me to stay another minute. I'll
give you my card."

"Well, leave me here," Page urged. "It can't be helped. I'm all right.
Give me your card. I'll tell the guide in the gallery that you kept the
seat for me--if I ever can get there. You must go. Don't stay another
minute. If you can, come for me here in the gallery, when it's over.
I'll wait for you. But if you can't come, all right. I can take care of
myself."

He could but assent to this. This was no time to think of small things.
He left her and bore back with all his might through the crowd, gained
the landing at the turn of the balustrade, waved his hat to her and
disappeared.

A quarter of an hour went by. Page, caught in the crowd, could neither
advance nor retreat. Ahead of her, some twenty steps away, she could
see the back rows of seats in the gallery. But they were already
occupied. It seemed hopeless to expect to see anything of the floor
that day. But she could no longer extricate herself from the press;
there was nothing to do but stay where she was.

On every side of her she caught odds and ends of dialogues and scraps
of discussions, and while she waited she found an interest in listening
to these, as they reached her from time to time.

"Well," observed the man in the tall white hat, who had discouraged
Landry from attempting to reach the gallery, "well, he's shaken 'em up
pretty well. Whether he downs 'em or they down him, he's made a good
fight."

His companion, a young man with eyeglasses, who wore a wonderful white
waistcoat with queer glass buttons, assented, and Page heard him add:

"Big operator, that Jadwin."

"They're doing for him now, though."

"I ain't so sure. He's got another fight in him. You'll see."

"Ever see him?"

"No, no, he don't come into the Pit--these big men never do."

Directly in front of Page two women kept up an interminable discourse.

"Well," said the one, "that's all very well, but Mr. Jadwin made my
sister-in-law--she lives in Dubuque, you know--a rich woman. She bought
some wheat, just for fun, you know, a long time ago, and held on till
Mr. Jadwin put the price up to four times what she paid for it. Then
she sold out. My, you ought to see the lovely house she's building, and
her son's gone to Europe, to study art, if you please, and a year ago,
my dear