Yet Marge, cool and prudent though he was, took no interest whatever in “securities” that deserved their name; he devoted all his attention to such stocks as fluctuated wildly,--stocks about which conflicting rumors, both good and bad, came day by day, sometimes hour by hour. He did not hesitate to inform himself that he was simply a gambler, at the only gentlemanly game which the law did not make disreputable, and that the place for his wits and money was among the stocks which most indulged in “quick turns” and to which the outside public--the great flock of lambs--would be most attracted. After a careful survey of the market, and several chats, apparently by chance, with alleged authorities of the street, he determined to confine his operations to the stock of “The Eastern and Western Consolidated Railway Company,” better known on the street and the stock-tickers’ tapes as “E. & W.” This stock had every feature that could make any alleged security attractive to operators, for there was a great deal of it, the company was formed by the consolidation, under the guise of leasing, of the property of several other companies, it was steadily picking up small feeders and incorporating them with the main line, it held some land-grants of possible value, and, lastly, some of the managers were so brilliant, daring, and unscrupulous that startling changes in the quotations might occur at any time at very short notice. Could a gambler ask for a more promising game? E. & W. soon began to justify Marge in his choice. For the first few days after he ventured into it the stock crept up by fractions and points so that by selling out and promptly re-purchasing Marge was able to double his investment, “on a margin,” from his profits alone. A temporary break frightened him a little, but on a rumor that the company was obtaining a lease of an important connecting link he borrowed enough money to buy more instead of selling, and as--for a wonder--the rumor proved true, he “realized” enough to take a couple of hundred shares more. Success began to manifest itself in his countenance and his manner, and to his great satisfaction he once heard his name coupled with that of one of the prominent operators in the stock.