"Oh, get out," protested the broker; then suddenly--the gambling
instinct that a lifetime passed in that place had cultivated in
him--exclaimed:

"All right. Flip a coin. But give me your word you'll stay by it.
Heads you come in; tails you don't. Will you give me your word?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," replied Jadwin, amused at the
foolishness of the whole proceeding. But as he balanced the half-dollar
on his thumb-nail, he was all at once absolutely assured that
it would fall heads. He flipped it in the air, and even as he
watched it spin, said to himself, "It will come heads. It could not
possibly be anything else. I know it will be heads."

And as a matter of course the coin fell heads.

"All right," he said, "I'll come in."

"For a million bushels?"

"Yes--for a million. How much in margins will you want?"

Gretry figured a moment on the back of an envelope.

"Fifty thousand dollars," he announced at length.

Jadwin wrote the check on a corner of the broker's desk, and held it
a moment before him.

"Good-bye," he said, apostrophising the bit of paper. "Good-bye. I