certainly did. Whether the doctor's hypothesis was fairly based or
not, it was a fact that, when he was first taken out to drive with his
watchful physician, he apparently took no notice of the boulder--which
still remained on the roadside, thanks to the later practical
explanation of the stage-driver's vision--and curtly refused to talk
about it. But, more significant to Duchesne, and perhaps more
perplexing, was a certain morose abstraction, which took the place of
his former vacuity of contentment, and an intolerance of his
attendants, which supplanted his old habitual trustfulness to their
care, that had been varied only by the occasional querulousness of an
invalid. His daughters sometimes found him regarding them with an
attention little short of suspicion, and even his son detected a
half-suppressed aversion in his interviews with him.

Referring this among themselves to his unfortunate malady, his
children, perhaps, justified this estrangement by paying very little
attention to it. They were more pleasantly occupied. The two girls
succeeded to the position held by Mamie Mulrady in the society of the
neighborhood, and divided the attentions of Rough-and-Ready. The young
editor of the "Record" had really achieved, through his supposed
intimacy with the Mulradys, the good fortune he had jestingly
prophesied. The disappearance of Don Caesar was regarded as a virtual
abandonment of the field to his rival: and the general opinion was that
he was engaged to the millionaire's daughter on a certain probation of
work and influence in his prospective father-in-law's interests. He
became successful in one or two speculations, the magic of the lucky
Mulrady's name befriending him. In the superstition of the mining
community, much of this luck was due to his having secured the old
cabin.

"To think," remarked one of the augurs of Red Dog, French Pete, a
polyglot jester, "that while every fool went to taking up claims where
the gold had already been found no one thought of stepping into the old
man's old choux in the cabbage-garden!" Any doubt, however, of the
alliance of the families was dissipated by the intimacy that sprang up
between the elder Slinn and the millionaire, after the latter's return
from San Francisco.

It began in a strange kind of pity for the physical weakness of the
man, which enlisted the sympathies of Mulrady, whose great strength had
never been deteriorated by the luxuries of wealth, and wh