“Sorry to keep you, but I’ve both hands full just now.  Every man in this city is thinking wheat,” he said.  “Has he word from Chicago, Thomson?”

“Yes,” said the clerk.  “Bears lost hold this morning.  General buying!”

Just then the door swung open and a breathless man came in.  “Guess I scared that clerk of yours who wanted to turn me off,” he said.  “Heard what Chicago’s doing?  Well, you’ve got to buy for me now.  They’re going to send her right up into the sky, and it’s ’bout time I got out before the bulls trample the life out of me.”

“Quite sure you can’t wait until to-morrow?” asked Graham.

The man shook his head.  “No, sir.  When I’ve been selling all along the line!  Send off right away, and tell your man on the market to cover every blame sale for me.”

Graham signed to the clerk, and as the telephone bell tinkled a lad brought in a message.  The broker opened it.  “New York lost advance and recovered it twice in the first hour,” he read.  “At present a point or two better.  Steady buying in Liverpool.”

“That,” said the other man, “is quite enough for me.  Let me have the contracts as soon as they’re ready.”

He went out, and Graham turned to Winston.  “There’s half-a-dozen more of them outside,” he said.  “Do you buy or sell?”

Winston laughed.  “I want to know which a wise man would do.”

“Well,” said Graham, “I can’t tell you.  The bulls rushed wheat up as I wired you, but the other folks got their claws in and worried it down again.  Wheat’s anywhere and nowhere all the time, and I’m advising nobody just now.  No doubt you’ve formed your own opinion.”

Winston nodded.  “It’s the last of the grapple, and the bears aren’t quite beaten yet, but any time the next week or two the decisive turn will come.  Then, if they haven’t got out, there’ll be very little left of them.”

“You seem tolerably sure of the thing.  Got plenty of confidence in the bulls?”

Winston smiled.  “I fancy I know how Western wheat was sown this year better than any statistician of the ring, and it’s not the bulls I’m counting on, but those millions of hungry folks in the old country.  It’s not New York or Chicago, but Liverpool the spark is coming from.”

“Well,” said Graham, “that’s my notion, too, but I’ve no time for anybody who hasn’t grist for me just now.  Still, I’d be glad to come round and take you home to supper if you haven’t the prejudice, which is not unknown at Silverdale, against eating with a man who makes his dollars on the market and didn’t get them given him.”

Winston laughed, and held up a lean brown hand.  “All I ever had until less than a year ago, I earned with that.  I’ll be ready for you.”

He went out with Alfreton, and noticed that the lad ate little at lunch.  When the meal was over, he glanced at him with a smile through the cigar smoke.