f the sufferers; going
practically without food or sleep, exercising the utmost audacity and
ingenuity in getting supplies, running fearlessly many dangers.

For the rest he played polo well, shot excellently at the traps, was
good at tennis, golf, bridge. Naturally he belonged to the best clubs
both city and country. He sailed a yacht expertly, was a keen fisherman,
hunted. Also he played poker a good deal and was noted for his accurate
taste in dress.

His mother firmly believed that he caused her much sorrow; his sisters
looked up to him with a little awe; his father down on him with a
fiercely tolerant contempt.

For Chuck had had his turn in the offices. His mind was a good one; his
education both formal and informal, had trained it fairly well; yet he
could not quite make good. Energetic, ambitious, keen young men,
clambering upward from the ruck, gave him points at the game and then
beat him. It was humiliating to the old man. He could not see the
perfectly normal reason. These young men were striving keenly for what
they had never had. Chuck was asked merely to add to what he already had
more than enough of by means of a game that itself did not interest him.

Late one evening Chuck and some friends were dining at the Cliff House.
They had been cruising up toward Tomales Bay, and had had themselves put
ashore here. No one knew of their whereabouts. Thus it was that Chuck
first learned of his father's death from apoplexy in the scareheads of
an evening paper handed him by the majordomo. He read the article
through carefully, then went alone to the beach below. It had been the
usual sensational article; and but two sentences clung to Chuck's
memory: "This fortunate young man's income will actually amount to about
ten dollars a minute. What a significance have now his days--and
nights!"

He looked out to sea whence the waves, in ordered rank, cast themselves
on the shore, seethed upward along the sands, poised, and receded. His
thoughts were many, but they always returned to the same point. Ten
dollars a minute--roughly speaking, seven thousand a day! What would he
do with it? "What a significance have now his days--and nights!"

His best friend, Joe Merrill, came down the path to him, and stood
silently by his side.

"I'm sorry about your governor, old man," he ventured; and then, after a
long time:

"You're the richest man in the West."

Chuck Gates arose. A wave larger than the rest thundered and ran