Gretry dropped into his chair before his desk.

“It’s the end,” he said, simply.

He drew a sheet of note paper to him, and in a shaking hand wrote a couple of lines.

“Take that,” he said, handing the note to the senior clerk, “take that to the secretary of the Board at once.”

And straight into the turmoil and confusion of the Pit, to the scene of so many of his victories, the battle ground whereon again and again, his enemies routed, he had remained the victor undisputed, undismayed came the “Great Bull.” No sooner had he set foot within the entrance to the Floor, than the news went flashing and flying from lip to lip. The galleries knew it, the public room, and the Western Union knew it, the telephone booths knew it, and lastly even the Wheat Pit, torn and tossed and rent asunder by the force this man himself had unchained, knew it, and knowing stood dismayed.