a
fresh cigar, and slowly wheeled his chair.

"Look here, Charley," he proposed, "we've got a big surplus. There's no
reason why we shouldn't make a killing on the side."

"As how?" asked Gates.

Cathcart outlined his plan. It was simply stock manipulation on a big
scale; although the naked import was somewhat obscured by the
complications of the scheme. After he had finished Gates smoked for some
time in silence.

"All right, Cliff," said he, "let's do it."

And so by a sentence, as his father before him, he marked the farthest
throw of the wave that had borne him blindly toward the shore. In the
next ten years Cathcart and Gates made forty million dollars. Charley
seemed to himself to be doing a tremendous business, but his real work,
his contribution to the episode in the life of the commonwealth, ceased
there. Again the wave receded.

CHAPTER III

The third generation of the Gates family consisted of two girls and a
boy. They were brought up as to their early childhood in what may be
called moderate circumstances. A small home near the little mill town, a
single Chinese servant, a setter dog, and plenty of horses formed their
entourage. When Charles, Jr., was eleven, and his sisters six and eight,
however, the family moved to a pretentious "mansion" on Nob Hill in San
Francisco. The environment of childhood became a memory: the reality of
life was comprised in the super-luxurious existence on Nob Hill.

It was not a particularly wise existence. Whims were too easily
realized, consequences too lightly avoided, discipline too capricious.
The children were sent to private schools where they met only their own
kind; they were specifically forbidden to mingle with the "hoodlums" in
the next street; they became accustomed to being sent here and there in
carriages with two servants, or later, in motor cars; they had always
spending money for the asking.

"I know what it is like to scrimp and save, and my children are going to
be spared that!" was Mrs. Gates's creed in the matter.

The little girls were always dressed alike in elaborately simple
clothes, with frilly, starched underpinnies, silk stockings, high boots
buttoned up slim legs; and across their shoulders, from beneath
wonderful lingerie hats, hung shining curls. The latter were not
natural, but had each day to be elaborately constructed. They made a
dainty and charming picture.

"Did you ever see anything so sweet in all your life!" was the