Busted, busted, busted. Hip, hip, hip, and
a tiger!"

"Come away, sir. For God's sake, Mr. Jadwin, come away."

Landry was pleading with Jadwin, clutching his arm in both his hands,
his lips to his chief's ear to make himself heard above the yelping of
the mob.

Jadwin was silent now. He seemed no longer to see or hear; heavily,
painfully he leaned upon the young man's shoulder.

"Come away, sir--for God's sake!"

The group of traders parted before them, cheering even while they gave
place, cheering with eyes averted, unwilling to see the ruin that meant
for them salvation.

"Yah-h-h. Yah-h-h, busted, busted!"

Landry had put his arm about Jadwin, and gripped him close as he led
him from the Pit. The sobs were in his throat again, and tears of
excitement, of grief, of anger and impotence were running down his face.

"Yah-h-h. Yah-h-h, he's done for, busted, busted!"

"Damn you all," cried Landry, throwing out a furious fist, "damn you
all; you brutes, you beasts! If he'd so much as raised a finger a week
ago, you'd have run for your lives."

But the cheering drowned his voice; and as the two passed out of the
Pit upon the floor, the gong that closed the trading struck and, as it
seemed, put a period, definite and final to the conclusion of Curtis
Jadwin's career as speculator.

Across the floor towards the doorway Landry led his defeated captain.
Jadwin was in a daze, he saw nothing, heard nothing. Quietly he
submitted to Landry's guiding arm. The visitors in the galleries bent
far over to see him pass, and from all over the floor, spectators,
hangers-on, corn-and-provision traders, messenger boys, clerks and
reporters came hurrying to watch the final exit of the Great Bull, from
the scene of his many victories and his one overwhelming defeat.

In silence they watched him go by. Only in the distance from the
direction of the Pit itself came the sound of dying cheers. But at the
doorway stood a figure that Landry recognised at once--a small man,
lean-faced, trimly dressed, his clean-shaven lips pursed like the mouth
of a shut money bag, imperturbable as ever, cold, unexcited--Calvin
Crookes himself.

And as Jadwin passed, Landry heard the Bear leader say:

"They can cheer now, all they want. They didn't do it. It was the wheat
itself that beat him; no combination of men could have done it--go on,
cheer, you damn fools! He was a bigger man than the best of us."

With the striking of the gong, and the ge