The response was many-phased. Farmers who were convinced of this logic, and those who were not, rushed their wheat to market at the then prevailing price, not waiting for the dollar and a half, but turning their produce into cash at once. To offset this sudden release of grain, buying orders poured into the markets, the same cash that had been received from the sale of actual wheat being put into margins upon fictitious wheat. Prices fluctuated in leaps of five and ten cents, and the pit went crazy. It was a seething, howling mob, tossing frenzied trades back and forth until faces were red and voices were hoarse; and the firm of Fox & Fleecer, long noted for its conservative dealing and almost passed by in the course of events, suddenly became the most important factor on the floor. On the ticker that on the first of May he had installed in his now mortgaged house upon his mortgaged farm, Wallingford saw the price mount to a dollar and a quarter, drop to a dollar-eighteen, jump to a dollar-twenty-two, back to twenty, up to twenty-five, back to twenty-two, up to twenty-eight. This last quotation he came back into the room to see after he had on his hat and ulster, and while his automobile, carrying Blackie Daw and Mrs. Wallingford, was spluttering and quivering at the door. Then he started for Chicago, leaving his neighbors back home to keep his telephone in a continuous jingle. Hiram Hines met Len Miller in the road, for example. Both were beaming. "What's the latest about wheat?" asked Len. "A dollar twenty-eight and seven-eighths," replied Hiram; "at least it was about an hour ago when I telephoned to Judge Wallingford's house. Suppose its climbing for a dollar-thirty by now. How much you got, Len?" "Twenty thousand bushels," answered Len jubilantly. "Bought it at a dollar twenty-four on a five-cent margin, and got that much profits already, nearly. Raised a thousand dollars on my sixty acres and have made nearly a thousand on it in two weeks; with Judge Wallingford's own brokers, too." "So's mine," exulted Hiram. "Paid a dollar-twenty-six, but I'm satisfied. When it reaches a dollar-forty I'll quit." Ezekiel Tinkle walked six miles to see his son Ham at the Wallingford place. "Jonas Whetmore's bragging about two thousand dollars he's made in a few days in this wheat business," he stated. "I don't rightly understand it, Hamlet. How about it? I don't believe in speculating, but Jonas says this ain't speculating, and if there's such a lot of money to be made I want some." "We all do," laughed Ham Tinkle, who, since he had "made good" with his new-fangled farming, was accepted as an equal by his father. "I had two hundred when I started. It's a thousand now, and will be five thousand before I quit. Bring your money to me, father, and I'll show you how to get in on the profits. But hurry. How much can you spare?" "Well," figured Ezekiel, "there's that fifteen hundred I've saved up for Bobbie's schooling; then when I sell my wheat----"