extravagant
style the flamboyant hand of Enriquez in English writing, I might have
read his name plainly enough displayed as president of the company. It
was evidently the prospectus of one of the ventures he had shown me. I
was more amused than indignant at the little trick he had played upon
my editorial astuteness. After all, if I had thus benefited the young
couple I was satisfied. I had not seen them since my first visit, as I
was very busy,--my communications with Mrs. Saltillo had been carried on
by letters and proofs,--and when I did finally call at their house, it
was only to find that they were visiting at San Jose. I wondered whether
the baby was still hanging on the wall, or, if he was taken with them,
who carried him.

A week later the stock of El Bolero was quoted at par. More than that,
an incomprehensible activity had been given to all the deserted Mexican
mines, and people began to look up scrip hitherto thrown aside as
worthless. Whether it was one of those extraordinary fevers which
attacked Californian speculation in the early days, or whether Enriquez
Saltillo had infected the stock-market with his own extravagance, I
never knew; but plans as wild, inventions as fantastic, and arguments
as illogical as ever emanated from his own brain, were set forth "on
'Change" with a gravity equal to his own. The most reasonable hypothesis
was that it was the effect of the well-known fact that the Spanish
Californian hitherto had not been a mining speculator, nor connected
in any way with the gold production on his native soil, deeming it
inconsistent with his patriarchal life and landed dignity, and that when
a "son of one of the oldest Spanish families, identified with the land
and its peculiar character for centuries, lent himself to its mineral
exploitations,"--I beg to say that I am quoting from the advertisement
in the "Excelsior,"--"it was a guerdon of success." This was so far true
that in a week Enriquez Saltillo was rich, and in a fair way to become a
millionaire.

It was a hot afternoon when I alighted from the stifling Wingdam coach,
and stood upon the cool, deep veranda of the Carquinez Springs Hotel.
After I had shaken off the dust which had lazily followed us, in our
descent of the mountain road, like a red smoke, occasionally overflowing
the coach windows, I went up to the room I had engaged for my brief
holiday. I knew the place well, although I could see that the hotel
itself had lately been