The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 12, 1903, Page 2

THE SUNDAY CALL the pines before him, his head and broad shoulders n the easy poise of power, there was about him from a little distance no sign of age. His lines were gracefully {ull, his bearing had still the alertness of th One must have come as near as Billy Brue now came to detect the marks of time in his face. Not of age—merely of time: for here was no senility, no quavering of fretful lines. The gray eyes shone bright and clear from far under the heavy, unbroken I'ne of brow ard the mouth was still straight and firmiy held, a mouth under sure control from corner to corner. A little had the years brought cut the rugged squareness of the chin and the deadly set of the jaws: a little had they pressed the cheeks to throw the high bones into broad rellef. But these were vastations. Othy the utmost of their de- wise Peter Bines showed his 74 years only by tne marks of a weli- ordered maturity. His eyes, it i& true, had that look of knowing which to the young seems always to betoken the futil- ity of, and to agamst the folly of, struggle against what must be; yvet they were kind eyes. and humoroue, with many of t smal! lines of laughter at their corners. Rezding the eves and mouth to- gether one perceived gentieness and stern- ness to be weil matched. working to any given end in amiable and effective com- promise. *“Uncle Peter” he had long been called by the public that knew him, and his own grandchildren had come to call him by the same term. finding him too young to meet their idesl of a grand- father. Billy Brue, riding up the trafl, halted, nodded, and was silent. The old man re- turned his salutation as briefly. These things by men who stay much alone come to be managed with verbal economy would talk presently, but greetings awkward. RBilly Brue took one foot from its stir- rup and tur n his saddle, pulling the stful position. Then he spat, y. and looked back down the canyon aimlessly, throwing his eves from side to £lde where the gray granite ledges showed through the tall spruce and pine trees But the old man knew he had been sent “Well. Billy Brue. what's doin’?" Billy Brue squirmed in the le. spat again, as with sudden resolve, and said “Why—uh—Dan’l J.—he's dead.” The old man repeated the words, daged- “Dan’l J.—he's dead:—why, who else is ve's emphasis. cunningly con- him to avold giving prominence to the word *“dead.” had suggested thi inquiry in the first moment of stupefac- t obody dead.” “Jost Gead?” His mighty shape s FAENIY else dead—jest Dan’'l J.—he's Dan’l J.—my boy—my boy Dan’l was stricken with a erected -there as if It wera a part of the mountain, flung up of o.d earth’s inner tragedy. confound- ancient Billy Brue turncd from the stony inter- rogation of his eves and took a few steps away A little wind sprang up among tre the moments passed the great figure stood transfixed s curious silence. The leathers creaked as the horse tur: messenger. with a k cznyon, stole an anxious glance at the old face. The sorrowful old eyes were fixed on things t were not; they looked vaguely as If in search. “Da he said It was not a cry; there was nothing plaintive in it. It was only the old man calling his son; David calling upon Absa- lom. Then there was a change. He came sternly forward “Who killed my boy?” Nobody, Uncle Peter: 'twas a stroke. He was goin' over the line and they laid out at Kaslo fer 2 day so’s Dan’l J. could see about a spur the ‘Lucky Cuss’ people wanted—and ybe it was the climbin’ brought it on The old man looked his years. Ag he came nearer Billy Brue saw tears tremble in his eves and roll unnoted down his cheeks. Yet his voice was unbroken and he wa deed. unconscious of the tears. “1 was afraid of that. He lived too He et too much and he drank too h and was too soft—was Dan'l—too mu soft The old voice trembled a bit and he stopped to look aside into the little pocket he had been exploring. Blily Brue looked back down the canyon where the swift stream brawled itself into white foam far below, “He wouldn't use his legs; I prodded him about it constant—" He stopped to brace himself ggainst the shock. Billy Brue still looked away. “l told him high altitudes and high livin® would do any man—" Again he was ool “But all he'd ever say was that times had changed since my day, and I wasn't to mind him.” He had himself better in hand now. “Why, I nursed that boy when he was a dear, funny little red baby with big round eyes rollin’ around to take notice; Le took notice awful quick—fur a baby. Oh, my! Oh, dear! Dan’l!” Again he stopped. “And it don't seem more'n yesterday that I was a-teachin’ him to throw the diamond hitch; he could throw the dia- mond hitch with his eyes shut—I reck- on by the time he was nine or ten. He had his faults, but they didn't hurt him none; Dan’l J. was a man, now—" He halted once more. ““The desd m'llionaire,”” began Billy Brue, readinrg from the obituary in the Skiplap Weekly Ledge, “was In his fifty- second year. Genial, generous to a fault, Guick to resent a wrong, but unfalling in his loyalty to a friend, a man of crge idcas, with a genius for large ope- rations, he was the type gf indefatigable enterprise that has buildéed this West- ern empire in a wilderness and given rich sustenance and luxurious homes to millions of prosperous. happy American citizens. Peace to his ashes! And a safe trip to his immortal soul over the one- way trafl!” Yes, yes— Dan'l J. fur sure-—-they got my boy Dan’l that time. Is that all it says, Billy? Any one with him?" “Why, this dispatch is signed by young Toler—th his confidential man.” “Nobody else? The old man was peering at him sharply from under the gray protruding brows. “Well, If you must know, Uncle Peter, this 1s what the notice says that come by wire to the Ledgg office,” and he read doggedly: ““The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is prostrated by the shock of his sudden death.” The old man became for the first time conscious of the tears In his eyes, and, pulling down one of the blue woolen shirt sleeves, wiped his wet cheeks. The slow, painful blush of age crept up across the iron strength of his face and passed. He ked away as he spoke. I knew it: T knew that ke all that Frisco bunch. gled with women sooner or later. Dan’l with it. I spleened against My Dan’l was They get tan 1 taxed it and let him know it. But he was a man and his own master—if you can rightly call a man his own master that does them el Do you know what-fur woman one was, Bllly?”’ Well, last time Dan’l J. was up to Skiplap, there was a swell party on th car—kind of a copfery-lookin’ blond Allie Ash, the brakenan on No. 4, he in Spokane, and on to some min- teils me she used to be now she'd got her hooks in' property up In the Coeur d'Alene. Cuurse, this mightn't be the one. “The old man had ceased to ! n. He was aroused to the need for a n t movin'. Billy! We can get down to Eden to-night: we'll have the moon fur two” hours on the trail soun’s the sun's gone. 1 can get 'em o drive me aver te Skiplap first thing to-morrow, have 'em make me up 'a train there fur Montana City. Was he—" “Dan’l J. has been took home—the noczepaper says.” They turned back down the trail, the old man astride Billy Brue's horse, fol- ved by his packmule and preceded by Billy Already, such was his buoyance and habit of quick recovery and readjust- ment under reverses, his thoughts were turning to his grandson. Daniel's boy— there was the grandson of his grandfather —the son of his father—fresh from col- lege, and the Instructions of European travel, knowing many things his father had net known, ready to take up the work of his father, and capable, perhaps, of giving it 2 better finish. 1.8 beloved West had lost one of it valued builders, but another should take his place. His boy sh uid come to him anrd finish the tasks of his father: an_. in the years to come, make other mighty tasks of em- pire-buflding for himeejf and the children ? his children. K Izhdld not occur to him that he and the boy might be as far apart in sympathies and aims as at that moment they were in circumstance. For, while the old man in the garb of - penniless prospector. toiled down the steep mountain trail on a cheap horse, his grandson wa reading the first news of his father's death In one of the luxurious staterooms of & large steam yacht that had just let down her anchor in Newport Harbor. And each—but for the death—had peen where most he wished to be—one with his coarse fare and out-of- doors life, roughened and seamed by the winds and browned by the sun to mahog- any tints; aged but plaving with boyish zest at his primitive sport: the other. a strong-limbed, well-marrowed, full- breathing south # 2%, with appetites all alert and sharpened, pink and pampered, Joving luxury &nd prizing above all things else the atmosphere of wealth and its re- finements. CHAPTER IV. THE WEST AGAINST THE EAST. Two months later a sectional war was raging in the Bincs home at Montana City. The West and the Mast were met in conflict—the old and the new. the stale and the fresh, And, if the bitternes was dissembled by the combatants, not less keenly was it felt, nor less determined was either faction to be relentless. - A glance about the “sitting-room’ in which the opposing forces were lined up, and Iuto the parlor through the opened folding doors, may help us to a better under- staniding of the issue involved. Both rooms were large and fur- nished in a style that had been supremely luxurious in 1878, The house, bullt in that year, of Oregon pine, had been quite the most preten- tious plece of architecture in that section of the West. It had been erected in the first days of Montana City as a convincing testimon!al from the owner to his faith in the town's future. The plush-upholstered sofas and chairs, with their backs and legs of carved black walnut, had come direct from New York. For pictures there early art chromos, were among them the once- prized companion pieces, Wide Awake” and “Fast “Asleep.” Lithography was represented by “The Fish- erman’s Pride” 8 Soldier's Dream of Home. In the handicrafts there were & photographic repro- duction of the Lord's Prayer, illustrated original- penman with un- enon gesiue for. scroi “them West. work; a group of water lilles in wax, floating on a mirror lake and protected by a glass globe; a full-rigged schooner, built cunningly inside a bottle by a mat- ricide serving a life sentence in the pegi- tentjary at S8an Quentin, and & mechan- ical canary bird in a gllded cage, a quired at the Philadelphia Centennial— bird that had caroled its death lay in the early winter of 1877 when it was wound up too hard and its little insides shapped. in the parior a few ornamental books were grouped with rare precision on the center table with its oval top of white marble. On the walls of the “sitting- room” were a steel engraving of Abra- ham Lincoln striking the shackles from a kneeling slave, and a framed cardboard rebus worked In red zeplhyr, the reading of which was “No Cro No Crown.” Thus far noth.ng helpfyl has been found. Let us examine, then, the what-not In the “‘sitting-room’ and the choice Em- pire cabinet that faces it from the oypo- site wall of the parlor, The what-not as an American institu- ticn is obsolete. Tndeed, 1t has been rath- er long since writers referred to it even in terms of opprobrious sarcasm. The what-not, once the cherished shrine of the American home, sheltered the smaller household goods for which ne oth- er resting place could be found. The Em- pire cabinet, with its rounding front of glass, its painted Watteau scenes and its mirrored back, has come to gupplant the humbler creatien in the fulfillment of all its tender or mysterious offices. Hi perchance, may be found a clew 0 the family strife The Bines what-not in the sitting-room was grimly orthodox In its equipment. Here was an anclent box covered with shell work, with a wavy little mirror in its back; a tender motto worked with the hair of the dead; a “Rock of Ages’ in a glass case, with a garland of pink cheniile around the base; two dried pine cones brightly varnished; an old daguerreotype in an ornamental case of hard rubber; o small old album; two small China vuscs of the kind that came always In pal standing on mats of crocheted worste three sea ahells, and the cup and seucer that belonged to grandma, which no one must touch because they'd been broken and were held together but weakly, ow- ing to the imperfections of home-made cement. The new cabinet, haughty in its var- nished elegance, with its Watteau dames and courtiers, and perhaps the knowludge that it enjoys widespread approval amoug the elect—this is a different matter. In ev- ery American home that is a home to-day it demands attention. The visitor, after eying it with cautious side giances. goes jauntily up to it, affecting to have been stirred by the mere Impulse of eegaut idleness. Under the affectedly care.ess gerutiny of the hostess he falls dramati- cally into an attitude of awed entrance- ment. Reverently he gazes vpon the priceless bibelots within: the mcther-of- pearl fan, haif open; the tiny cup and saucer of Sevres on their brass casel: the miniature Cupid and Psyche Iin marble; the Japanese wrestlers carved in ivory; the bailet-dancer in Disque; the coral necklace; the souvenir spoon from the Paris Exposition; the jade bracelet: and the silver snuff-box that grandfather car- ried to the day of his death. If the gaz- ing visitor be a person of abandoned character he¢ makes humorous pretense that the householder has done wisely to turn a key upon these treasures, against the ravishings of the overwhelmed and frenzied connoisseur. He wears the look of one who is gnawed with envy, and he heaves the sigh of despalr. But when he notes presently that he has ceased to be ohserved he sneaks cheer- fully to another part of the room. The what-not s obsolete. The Empire cabinet is regnant. Yet, although one Is the lineal descendant of the other—its sophisticated grandchild—they are hostile and irreconcilable, Twenty years hence the cabinct will be proscribed and its contents catalogued in those same terms of disparagment that the what-not became long since too dear to Incur. Both will then have attained the state of honorable extinction now en- joyed by the dodo. The what-not had curiously survived in the Bines home—survived unto the coming of the princely cabinet—survived to give battle if it might. Here, perhaps, may be found the sym- balle clew to the strife's cause. The gole non-combatant was Mrs, Bines, the widow. A neutral was this xood wo- man, and a well-wisher to each faction. “I tell you it's all the same to me,” she declared. “Montana City or Fifth Ave- nue In New York. I guess I can do well enough in either place so long as the rest of you are satisfled.” It had beey all the same to Mrs. Bines for @8 many years as § woman of fifty can remember. It was the lot of wives in her day and environment early to learn the supreme wisdom of abolishing prefer- ences. Riches and poverty, ease and hard- ship, mountain and plain, town and wil- derness, they followed in no ascertalna- ble sequence, and a superlority of indif- ference to each was the only protection against hurts from the unexpected. This trained neutrality of Mrs. Bines served her finely now. She had no lead- ing to ally herself against her children in their wish to go East, nor against Uncle Peter Bines in his stubborn effort to keep She folded her hands to wait on the others. And the battle raged. The old man, sole defender of the vir- tuous and stalwart West against an Ea: that he alleged to be effete and depraved, had now resorted to sarcasm—a thing that Mr. Carlyle thought was as good as the language of the devil. “And here, now, how about this dog- luncheon?’ he continued,. glancing at a New York newspaper clutched accusingly in his hand. “It was give, I see, by one of your Newport cronie: Now, that's heaithy doin’s fur a two-fisted Christlan, ain’t it? 1 want to know. Shappyronging a select company of lady and gentlemen dogs from soup to coffee; pressing a little more of the dog-biscuit on this one, and seein’ that the other don’t misplay Its finger-bowl no'way., How I would love to read of the Bines standin’ up, all in purty velvet pants_most likely, to recelve at one of them bow-wow functions—functions, T belleve, is the name of 1t?" he ended In polite inquiry. “"There, there, Uncle Peter!” the young man broke in, soothingly; ‘“you mustn't take those Sunday newspapers as gospel truth; those storles are printed for just sugh rampant old tenderfoots as you dre; and even if there is one foolish freak, he coeen't represent all society in the bet. ter sense of the term.” “Yes, and you!" Uncle Peter broke out again, reminded of another grievance. “You know well enough your true name is Peter—Pete and Petie when you was a baby and Peter when you left for college. And you're ashamed of what you've dons, too, for you tried to hide them callin’ cards from me the other day, only you Bring 'em out! I'm and Pish shall ses in symbol The young man, not without embarrass- ment, drew forth a Russia leather card- case which the old man took from him as one having authority. “‘Here you are, Marthy Bines!" he ex- claimed, handing her a card; “here you are! reaa it! ur. P. Percival Bines.' ivow don’t you feel proud of havin' stuck out for Percival when you see it in cold print? You know mighty well his pa and me agreed to Percival only fur a middle name, jest to please you—and he wa'n to be called by it—only jest Peter or ‘Peter P.' at most: and now look at the way he’s gone and garbled his good name.” Mr. P. Percival Bines blushed furiously here, but reioined, nevertheless, with quiet dignity, that a man's name was something about which he should have the ruling voice, especially where it was possible for him to rectify or conceal the unhappy choice of his parent: “And while we're on names,” he con- tinued, *‘do try to remem in case you ever get among people, that Bis’ name I8 Psvche and not Pish.” The blonde and complacent Miss Bin here moved uneasily in her patent blue plush rocker and spoke for the first time, with a grateful glance at her brother. “Yes_ Uncle Peter, for mercy's sake, do -1 Den't make us a laughing-stock! But your name Is Pish. A person’s name {s what thelr folks name 'em, aint it? Your ma comes acrost a name in & book that she likes the looks of, and she takes it to spell Pish, and she ups and names you Pish, and we all calls you h and Plshy, and then when you tod- dle off to public school how you speil It they tell you it's some- thing else—an outlandish name if spellin’ means anything. If it comes to that you ought to cha the spellin’ instead of the name that your poor pa loved Yet the old man had come to know that he was fighting a lost fight—lost before it hed ever begun. “If will be a good ehance’ ventured Mrs. Bines, timidly, “for Pishy—I mean Sike—Sicky—to meet the right sort of people.” “Yee, I should say—and the wrong sort. The Ingagin’ hest of them lady and gen- tlemen dogs. fur instance.' “But Uncle Peter,” broke In the young man vou shouldn't expect a girl of Psyche's beauty and fortune to vegetate in Moniana City alli her life. Why, any sort of brilllant marriage is possible to her if she goes among the right people. Don't you want the family to amount to something socfally? Is our money to do us no gond? And do you think I'm golng to stay here and be a moss-back and ralse chin whiskers and work myself to death the way my father did “No, no,” replied the old man, with a glance at the mather; “not jest the way your pa dld; you might do different and some better: but all the same, you won't do any better'n he did any way vou'll learn to live in New York. Unless you was to go broke there,”” he added, thoughtfully: *in that case you got the stuff in you and it'd come out: but you got too much money to go broke. “And you'll see that T lead a decent enough life. Times have changed since my father was a young man. “Yes: that's what vour pa told me— times had changed since I was a young man; but I could 'a’ done him good If he'd 'a’ listened.” “Well, we'll try it. The tide Is setting that way from all over the country. Here, listen to this editorial in the Sun. And he read from his own paper: “A GOOD FPLACE TO MOVE TO. ‘‘One of the most interesting evidences of the growth of New York Is the news that Mr. Anson Ledrick of the Consoll- dated Copper Company has purchased an extensive building site on Riverside Drive and will presently improve it with a cost- ly residence. Mr. Ledrick's ueeision to move his household effects to Manhattan Island s in accordance with a very marked tendency of successful Americans. ““There are those who' are fond of depre- clating New York; of assalling it with all sorts of cheap and sensational vitu- veration; of picturing it as the one great canker spot of the Western hemisphere, as Irretrievably sunk in wickedness and shame. The fact remains, however, that the city, as never before, is the greut natienal center of wealth, culture and distinction of every kind, and that here the citizen, successful in art, literature or practical achlevement, instinctively seeks his ablding place. ‘“The restlessness of ‘he average Ameri- can millionaire while he remains outside the city limits is frequently remarked upon. And even the mighty overlords of Chicago, falling in with the prevailing fashion, have forsaken the shores of the great inland sea and pitched their tents with us: not to speak of the copper kings of Montana. Why is it that these inrer- esting men, after acquiring fortune and fame elsewhere, are not content to 1e- maln upon the scene of their early tri- umphs? Why is it that they immediately pack thelr carpetbags, take the first through train to our gates, and startle the investing public by the manner In which they bull the price of New York building lots?"" The old man listened absently. ‘‘And probably some day I'll read of you in that same center of culture and distinction as P. Percival Bines, a young man of obscure fam'ly, that rose by his own efforte to be the dashin' young co- tillon leader and the well-known club- man, and that his pink teas fur dogs is barked about by every fashionable ca- nine on the island.” The young man continued to read: “‘“These men are not vain fools: they are shrewd, successful men of the world. They have surveyed New York City from a distance and have discovered that, in spite of Tammany and In spite of yellow journals, New York is a town of un- equaled attractiveness. And so they come; and their coming shows us what we are, Not only millioraires, but also painters and novelists and men and women of varied distinction. The eity palpitates with life and ambition and hope and promise; it attracts the great and the successful, and those who admire greatness and success. The force of nat- ural selection is at work here as every- where; and it is rapidly concentrating in our small island whatever s finest, most progressive and best in the American character.” “Well, now, do me a last favor before you pike off East,” pleaded the old man. “Make a trip with me over the proper- tie: See ’'em once any way, and see a little more of this country and these people. Mebbe they're better'n you think. Give me about three weeks or a month, and then, by Crimini, you can oft if you're set on it and be ‘whatever is finest and best in the American character,’ as that feller puts it. But some day, son, you'll find out there’s a whole lot of dif- ference between a great man of wealth and & man of great weaith. Them last is gettin’ terrible common.” CHAPTER V. 80 the old man and the young man real enjoyment for him. To feel impartial- ly a multitude of strong, fresh wants — the imperative need to live life in all its fullness, this of itself makes the heart to sing. And, above the full com- plement of wants, to have been dow- ered by heaven with a stanch dis- belief in the unat- tainable—this is & fortune rather to be chosen than a xood name or great rich since th name and riches and all things de- sired must come to the call of it. Our Western born youth of twenty- five had the wants and the sense of power inherited from a lne of men eager of initiative, the product of a environment where only such could sur- vive. Doubtless in him was the sou) and body hunger of his & ra ndfather, cramping and deny- ing through hard- T, yet st hardest times of the soft material Juxu- ries that shou!d some day be his. Doubt- less marked in his character, too, was relaxed tension of his disposition to feast as capacity to fast; to the well the as take all, feel all, do all, with an avidity greater by reason of the grinding absti- nence and the later indulgence of his forbears. A sage versed in the lore of heredity as modified by environment may some day trace for us the progress across this continent of an austere Puritan, showing how the strain emerges from the wilderness at the Western ocean with a character so widely differing from the one with which he began the adventurous journey—regarding, especlally, a tolerance of the so-called good and many of the bad things of life. Until this is done we may, perhaps, consider the change to be with- out valld cause. Young Bines, at all events, was the flower of a pioneer stock, and him the gods of life cherished, so that all the forces of the young land about him were as his own. Yet, though his pulses rhymed to theirs, he did not perceive his relation to them; nefther he nor the land was yet become Introspective. 8o informed was he with the impetuous spirit of youth that the least manifestation of life found its answering thrill in him. And it was suf- ficlent to feel this. There was no time barren enough of sensation to reason about it. Uncle Peter's plan for an inspection of the Bines preperties had at first won him by touching his sense of duty. He antici- pated no interest or pleasure in the trip. Yet from the bBeginning he enjoyed it to the full. Being what he was, the constant ed him, the out-of-docrs the occasional sorties from the rall- road by horse to some remote mining camp, or to a stock ranch or lumber mp. He had been away for eix years, and it pleased him to note that he was treated by the people he met with a genu- ine respeet and liking as the son of his father. In the East he had been accus- tomed to a gertain deference from very uncertain people becautze he was the son of & rich man. l.ere he had prestige be- cause he was the son of Danlel Bines, or- ganizer and man of affairs. He felt some- times that the men at mi mull or ranch looked him over with misgiving, and had thelr cautious liking compelled only by the assurance that he was indeed the son of Danfel. They left him at these times with the suspieion that this bare fact meant enough with them to carry a man of infelicitous ¢xterior. He was pleased, moreover, to feel a new respect for .ncle Peter. He observed that men of all degrees looked up to him, sought and relied upon his judgment; the investing capitalist whom they met not less than the mine foreman: the made man and the laborer. In the drawing- room at home he had fe.. so agreeably superior to the old man: now he felt his own Inferfority in a new element and be- gan to view him with more respect. He saw him to be the shrewd man of affalrs, with a thorough grasp of detail in every branch of their Interests: and a deep man, as well: a little narrow, perhaps, from his manner of life, but of unfailing kind- ness, and with rather a young man’s rad- icalism than an old man’'s conservatism; one who, In an emergency, might be re- lied upon to take the unexpected but ef- fective course. For hia own part, old Peter Bines learned in the course of the trip to un- derstand and like his grandson better. At bottom he dec'ded the young man to be sound after all, and he began to make allowance for his geographical heresies. The boy had been sent to an Eastern col- lege; that was clearly a mistake, putting him out of sympathy with the West; and he had never been made to work, which wae another and graver mistake, ‘but he’'d do more’'n his father ever did if "twa’'n’t fur his father's money,” the old man concluded, For he saw In their talks that the very Eastern experience which he derided had given the young fellow a poise and a certain readiness to grasp de- talls in the large that his father had been a lifetime In acquiring. For a month they loitered over the sur- rounding territory in the private car, gliding through fertile valleys, over bleak passes, steaming up narrow little canyons along the down-rushing streams with their cool shallow murmurs. They would learn one day that a cross- cut wa8 to be started on the Last Chance, or that tne. concentrates of the True Grit would thereafter be shipped o S to the Careless Creek smel- ter. Next they would learn that a new herd of Gallows had done finely last season on the Bitter Root branch; that a big lot of ore was sacked at the Irish Boy: that an eight- een-inch vein had been struck in the Old Crow; that a con- centrator was needed at Hell- andgone, and that rich gold- bearing copper and sand-bear- ing free gold had been found over on Horseback Ridge. Another day they would drive far into a forest of spruce and hemlock to a camp where thousands of ties wers being cut and floated down to the line of the new rallway. Sometimes they spent a night in one of the smaller mining camps off the railroad, where- of facetious notes would ap- pear fn the nearest weekly, such as: “The Hon. Peter Bines and his grandson, who is a chip of the old block, spent Tuesday night at Rock Rip. Young Bines played the deal from soda card to hock at Lem Tully's Turf Exchange, and showed Lem's dealer good and plenty that there's no piker strain in him.” Or it might be: “Poker stacks continue to have a downward tendency. They were sold last week as low as eighty chips for a dol- lar. It {s sad to see this nobli game dragging along In the lower levels of prosperity, and we take as a favorable omen t appearance of Uncle Pe- ter Bines and his grandson the other night. The prices went to par in a minute. Young Bines gave signs of becoming as delicately Intuitional in the matter of concealed values a. his father, the lamented Dan- fel J.” Again it was: “Uncle Peter Bines reports from over Kettle Creek way that the sagebrush whisky they take a man's two bits for there would gnaw holes in limestone. Peter is likeller to find a ledge of dollar bills than he is good whisky this far off the main trall. The late Danfel J. could h: tol him as much, and Daniel J.'s boy, who accompanies Vncle Peter, will know it hereafter.” The young man felt whole- somely insignificant at these and other signs that he was taken on sufferance as a son and a grandson. He was content that it should be so. Indeed, there was little with which he was not content. That he was habitually preoccupled, cven when there wi most move- ment about them, early be- came apparent to Uncle Pater. That he was constantly cheer- ful proved the mattez, of his musings to be pleasant. That he was proner than most youths to serious meditation Unecle Peter did not believe. Therefore he attributed the moods of abstraction to some matter probably connected with his project of removing the family East. It was not permitted Uncle Peter to know, nor was his own youth recent enough for him to sus- pect, the truth. And the mys- tery stayed inviolate untll a day came and went that lald it bare even to the old man's eyes. They awoke one morning to find the car on a siding at the One Girl mine. Coupled to it was another car from an Eastern road that their train had taken on some time in the night. Percival noted the car with interest as he paced be- side the track 'n the cool clear air before breakfast. The curtains were drawn, and the only signs of life to be ob- served were at the kitchen end, where (he white-clad