n Freeman's tips and
his own.

He said, hesitatingly, as though ashamed of his timidity:

"The stock seems pretty high at 180."

"You won't think so when it sells at 250. Gilmartin, I don't _hear_
this; I don't _think_ it; I _know_ it!"

"All right; I'm in," quoth Gilmartin, jovially. He felt a sense of
emancipation now that he had made up his mind to resume his speculating.
He took every cent of the nine hundred dollars he had made from telling
people the same things that Freeman told him now, and bought a hundred
Gotham Gas at $185 a share. Also he telegraphed to all his clients to
plunge in the stock.

It fluctuated between 184 and 186 for a fortnight. Freeman daily
asseverated that "they" were accumulating the stock. But, one fine day,
the directors met, agreed that business was bad, and having sold out
most of their own holdings, decided to reduce the dividend rate from 8
to 6 per cent. Gotham Gas broke seventeen points in ten short minutes.
Gilmartin lost all he had. He found it impossible to pay for his
advertisements. The telegraph companies refused to accept any more
"collect" messages. This deprived Gilmartin of his income as a tipster.
Griggs had kept on speculating and had lost all his money and his wife's
in a little deal in Iowa Midland. All that Gilmartin could hope to get
from him was an occasional invitation to dinner. Mrs. Gilmartin, after
they were dispossessed for non-payment of rent, left her husband, and
went to live with a sister in Newark who did not like Gilmartin.

His clothes became shabby and his meals irregular. But always in his
heart, as abiding as an inventor's faith in himself, there dwelt the
hope that some day, somehow, he would "strike it rich" in the stock
market.

One day he borrowed five dollars from a man who had made five thousand
in Cosmopolitan Traction. The stock, the man said, had only begun to go
up, and Gilmartin believed it and bought five shares in "Percy's," his
favorite bucket shop. The stock began to rise slowly but steadily. The
next afternoon "Percy's" was raided, the proprietor having disagreed
with the police as to price.

Gilmartin lingered about New Street, talking with other customers of the
raided bucket shop, discussing whether or not it was a "put up job" of
old Percy himself, who, it was known, had been losing money to the crowd
for weeks past. One by one the victims went away and at length Gilmartin
left the ticker district. He walked slowly down