fastidious taps of their yellow beaks.

Landry cast a glance at the clock beneath the dial on the wall
behind him. It was twenty-five minutes after nine. He stood in his
accustomed place on the north side of the Wheat Pit, upon the
topmost stair. The Pit was full. Below him and on either side of him
were the brokers, scalpers, and traders--Hirsch, Semple, Kelly,
Winston, and Rusbridge. The redoubtable Leaycraft, who, bidding for
himself, was supposed to hold the longest line of May wheat of any
one man in the Pit, the insignificant Grossmann, a Jew who wore a
flannel shirt, and to whose outcries no one ever paid the least
attention. Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock, the inseparable trio
who represented the Porteous gang, silent men, middle-aged, who had
but to speak in order to buy or sell a million bushels on the spot.
And others, and still others, veterans of sixty-five, recruits just
out of their teens, men who--some of them--in the past had for a
moment dominated the entire Pit, but who now were content to play
the part of "eighth-chasers," buying and selling on the same day,
content with a profit of ten dollars. Others who might at that very
moment be nursing plans which in a week's time would make them
millionaires; still others who, under a mask of nonchalance, strove
to hide the chagrin of yesterday's defeat. And they were there,
ready, inordinately alert, ears turned to the faintest sound, eyes
searching for the vaguest trace of meaning in those of their rivals,
nervous, keyed to the highest tension, ready to thrust deep into the
slightest opening, to spring, mercilessly, upon the smallest
undefended spot. Grossmann, the little Jew of the grimy flannel
shirt, perspired in the stress of the suspense, all but powerless to
maintain silence till the signal should be given, drawing trembling
fingers across his mouth. Winston, brawny, solid, unperturbed, his