Men of immense means whose enterprise and holdings these stocks represented, the men who schemed out and built the railroads, opened the mines, organized trading enterprises, and built up immense manufactories.

They might use brokers or other agents to buy and sell on 'change; but this buying and selling must be, and always was, incidental to the actual fact--the mine, the railroad, the wheat crop, the flour mill, and so on.

Anything less than straight-out sales to realize quickly on assets, or buying to hold as an investment, was gambling pure and simple, and these men were gamblers.

He was nothing more than a gambler's agent.

It was not troubling him any just at this moment, but it was not at all a mystery now, what he was.