of the market.

Bockstein relieved the embarrassment of the situation by coming in out
of breath, with a brave pretense of having been merely consulting a
customer in the next room.

"You haf exblained to Misder Eppner?" he inquired. "Den all is done.
Here is a card to der Board Room. If orders you haf to gif, Eppner vill
dake dem on der floor. Zhust gif him der check for margin, and all is
vell."

At the end of this harangue I found myself outside the office, with
Bockstein's back waddling toward the private room where the partners
were to have their last consultation before going to the Board.

My check had been honored, then, and Bockstein had assured himself of
my solvency. In the rebound from anxiety, I swelled with the pride of a
capitalist--on Doddridge Knapp's money.

In the Board Room of the big Exchange the uproar was something
astonishing. The confusion outside had given me a suggestion that the
business of buying and selling stocks was carried on in a somewhat less
conventional manner than the trade in groceries. But it had not quite
prepared me for the scene in the Exchange.

The floor was filled with a crowd of lunatics, howling, shaking fists,
and pushing and scrambling from one place to another with the frenzy of
a band of red men practising the scalp dance by the bright glow of the
white man's fire-water. A confused roar rose from the mob, and whenever
it showed signs of flagging a louder cry from some quarter would renew