Durkin, bending restlessly over his relay, and dreamily cogitating on the newly discovered fact that Morse was a language as harmonious and mysterious and subtly expressive as music itself, sat up with a sudden galvanic jerk of the body. “_Helen sails at one tomorrow!_” thrilled and warbled and sang the little machine of dots and dashes; and the listening operator knew that his time had come. He caught up the wires that ran through the gas-pipe to the conduit, and bracing himself against the basement wall, pulled with all his strength. They parted suddenly, somewhere near the cables, and sent him sprawling noisily over the floor. He hurriedly picked himself up, flung every tool and instrument that remained in the dingy basement into his capacious club bag, and carefully coiled and wrapped every foot of telltale wire. As little evidence as possible, he decided, should remain behind him. Five minutes later he stepped into Robinson & Little’s brokerage offices. It was, in fact, just as the senior member of the firm was slipping off his light covert-cloth overcoat and making ready for a feverish day’s business. Ezra Robinson stared a little hard when Durkin told him that he had thirteen thousand dollars to throw into “short” cotton that morning, and asked on what margin he would be able to do business. “Well,” answered the broker, with his curt laugh, “it’s only on the buying side that we’re demanding five dollars a bale _this_ morning!” He looked at Durkin sharply. “You’re on the wrong side of the market, young man!” he warned him. “Perhaps,” said Durkin easily. “But I’m superstitious!” The man of business eyed him almost impatiently. Durkin laughed good-naturedly. “I mean I had a sort of Joseph’s dream that cotton was going to break down to sixteen today!” “Well, you can’t afford to work on dreams. Cotton goes up to nineteen today, and stays there. Candidly, I’d advise you to keep off the bear side—for a month or two, anyway!” But Durkin was not open to dissuasion. “When May drops down to sixteen or so I’ll be ready to let the ‘shorts’ start to cover!” he argued mildly, as he placed his money, gave his instructions, and carried away his all-important little slip of paper. Then he hurried out, and dodged and twisted and ran through those crowded and sunless cañons of business where only a narrow strip of earth’s high-arching sky showed overhead. As he turned from William Street into Hanover Square, through the second tier of half-opened plate glass windows he could already hear the dull roar of the Cotton Pit. The grim day’s business, he knew, was already under way.