flabbergasting!"

"Oh, I haven't done so badly. You'd probably like to know how it came
about, and I might as well tell you the whole story. Jack was an awful
fizzle--absolutely no good. I saw that early in the game, and I knew
where I'd bring up if I didn't look out for myself. He began nibbling
like a hungry rat at my share of father's estate as soon as you sent it
to me. I backed him in half a dozen things he wanted to go into. He
hadn't the business sense of a baby, and I began to see that I was going
to bump my head good and hard if I didn't look sharp. He began to cheer
himself during his failures by getting drunk, which wasn't exactly
pretty. He went his way and I went mine, and as he lied to me about
everything I began to lie to him about my money. I made some friends,
and one of these happened to be the wife of a banker with brains.
Through him I made some small turns in real estate, covering them up so
Jack wouldn't know. The fifth year after I left here I made twenty
thousand dollars in one turn. Then I grub-staked two young fellows who
wanted to try their luck in Nevada--nice college boys, all on the
square. I invested about two thousand dollars in those youngsters, and
as a result got into Broken Axe. It was so good that it scared me, and I
sold out for the two hundred and fifty thousand you see on the slip
there, and bought Government bonds with it. My banker covered all these
things up for me as long as I had Jack on my hands. When he became
intolerable I got rid of him, legally, for fear he'd cause trouble if he
found what I'd been doing. I'm a little tired of running my own business
now and mean to dump it off on you if you don't mind. I left my papers
in a safety vault in Chicago, but here's my Phoenix Lumber and a
jumble of miscellaneous junk I want to send West to be sold so I can put
it into things around here. I'm not going back there any more."

"Lord!" he ejaculated, rubbing his head. "You made all that money
yourself?"

"Sheer luck, mostly. But it isn't so bad, take it all round. By the way,
in that junk there are some Sycamore Traction bonds I took off the
bank's hands out there. They were carrying them as collateral for a man
Sam Holton stung on one of his Western trips. He'd planted all he could
in New York and had to try a new field. The bank foreclosed on the bonds
and I bought twenty of them at sixty-five. I suppose from what I hear
that they're not good for much but kindling."

"You