discharge. He immediately
became the guest of Don Roberto, who lived with his younger sister on a
ranch covering three hundred thousand acres, and, his first intention
being to take up land, was initiated into the mysteries of
horse-raising, tanning hides, and making tallow; the two last-named
industries being pursued for purposes of barter with the Boston
skippers. But farming was not to Polk's taste; he hated waiting on the
slow processes of Nature. He married Magdalena Yorba, and borrowed from
Don Roberto enough money to open a store in Monterey stocked with such
necessities and luxuries as could be imported from Boston. When the
facile Californians had no ready money to pay for their wholesale
purchases, he took a mortgage on the next hide yield, or on a small
ranch. His rate of interest was twelve per cent; and as the Californians
were never prepared to pay when the day of reckoning came, he foreclosed
with a promptitude which both horrified Don Roberto and made imperious
demands upon his admiration.

"My dear Don," Polk would say, "if it isn't I, it will be some one else.
I'm not the only one--and look at the squatters. I'm becoming a rich
man, and if I were not, I'd be a fool. You had your day, but you were
never made to last. Your boots are a comfortable fit, and I propose to
wear them. I don't mean yours, by the way. I'm going to look after you.
Better think it over and come into partnership."

To this Don Roberto would not hearken; but when the rush to the gold
mines began he was persuaded by Polk to take a trip into the San Joaquin
valley to "see the circus," as the Yankee phrased it. There, in
community with his brother-in-law, he staked off a claim, and there the
lust for gold entered his veins and never left it. He returned to
Monterey a rich man in something besides land. After that there was
little conversation between himself and Polk on any subject but money
and the manner of its multiplication; and, as the years passed, and
Polk's prophecy was fulfilled, he gave the devotion of a fanatic to the
retention of his vast inheritance and to the development of his grafted
financial faculty.

Between the mines, his store, and his various enterprises in San
Francisco, Polk rapidly became a wealthy man. Even in those days he was
accounted an unscrupulous one, but he was powerful enough to hold the
opinion of men in contempt and too shrewd to elbow such law as there
was. And his gratitude and friendship for