They could not take their eyes from the board before them. Their own ruin, told in mournful numbers by the little machine, fascinated them. To be sure, poor Gilmartin said: “I’ve changed my mind about Newport. I guess I’ll spend the summer on my own _Hotel de Roof_!” And he grinned; but he grinned alone. Wilson, the dry goods man, who laughed so joyously at everybody’s jokes, was now watching, as if under a hypnotic spell, the lips of the man who sat on the high stool beside the ticker and called out the prices to the quotation boy. Now and again Wilson’s own lips made curious grimaces, as if speaking to himself. Brown, the slender, pale-faced man, was outside in the hall, pacing to and fro. All was lost, including honor. And he was afraid to look at the ticker, afraid to hear the prices shouted, yet hoping—for a miracle! Gilmartin came out from the office, saw Brown and said, with sickly bravado: “I held out as long as I could. But they got _my_ ducats. A sporting life comes high, I tell you!” But Brown did not heed him and Gilmartin pushed the elevator-button impatiently and cursed at the delay. He not only had lost the “paper” profits he had accumulated during the bull-market but all his savings of years had crumbled away beneath the strokes of the ticker that day. It was the same with all. They would not take a small loss at first but had held on, in the hope of a recovery that would “let them out even.” And prices had sunk and sunk until the loss was so great that it seemed only proper to hold on, if need be a year, for sooner or later prices must come back. But the break “shook them out,” and prices went just so much lower because so many people had to sell, whether they would or not. IV. After the slump most of the customers returned to their legitimate business—sadder, but it is to be feared, not much wiser men. Gilmartin, after the first numbing shock, tried to learn of fresh opportunities in the drug business. But his heart was not in his search. There was the shame of confessing defeat in Wall Street so soon after leaving Maiden Lane; but far stronger than this was the effect of the poison of gambling. If it was bad enough to be obliged to begin lower than he had been at Maxwell & Kip’s, it was worse to condemn himself to long weary years of work in the drug business when his reward, if he remained strong and healthy, would consist merely in being able to save a few thousands. But a few lucky weeks in the stock market would win him back all he had lost—and more!