单项选择题

One of the most widely discussed subjects these days is the energy crisis. Automobile drivers cannot get gasoline; homeowners may not get enough heating oil; factories are threatened by a fuel shortage.
The crisis has (26) questions about the large oil companies and windfall profits. Critics of the oil industry (27) that the major companies are getting richer because of the oil shortage. Shortage, of cause, (28) prices up. As oil prices rise, the critics say, the oil companies will make more and more money-- windfall profits without doing a thing to (29) the extra cash. "Windfall profits are sudden unearned profits -- profits made (30) luck, or some special mm of events.
The word itself tells what "windfall" means - something blown (31) by the wind, such as trees, or fruit blown from trees. But the word has (32) a special meaning. This meaning - getting something unearned - was first used in medieval England.
This is how it started: At that time much of the land was in the hands of (33) barons. The rest of the people, commoners, lived and worked on their vast estates. They planted the seed, cared for the farm animals and harvested the crops. Not all the land, however, was used for fanning. Every land baron kept a large private forest for (34) deer and wild boar.
When hungry, the people sometimes would kill the animals in the lord’s forest for food. And there were times when they might cut down trees for fuel. So, strong laws were passed to protect the forests and the animals. (35) were severely punished. But there was one way people could get wood from the forest. If they found "windfalls", they were free to take them for use as fuel in their homes. And that is the meaning that has come down to us - something good gotten by luck or (36) .
The common people of old England, often hungry and cold, must often have prayed for a good strong wind. Critics today (37) that the oil industry has also been praying for something just like it -- some political or military (38) that might produce a windfall -- a rise in oil price and profits.
The oil companies deny that this is so. In Congress, critics of the oil companies have proposed a (39) on such profits. The debate on rising oil prices will go on for some time, and (40) likely we will hear more and more about windfall profits.