ill always find room for you and me when we run down there for a
little fresh air."

"And did you have all that in your mind, papa, when you came down here,
and was that what you and Mr. Dawson wanted to talk about?" said the
astonished Rose.

"Mainly, my dear, mainly. You see I'm a capitalist now, and the
real value of capital is to know how and when to apply it to certain
conditions."

"And this Mr.--Mr. Bent--do you think--he will go on and find the water,
papa?" said Rose, hesitatingly.

"Ah! Bent--Tom Bent--oh, yes," said Mallory, with great heartiness.
"Capital fellow, Bent! and mighty ingenious! Glad you met him! Well,"
thoughtfully but still heartily, "he may not find it exactly where he
expected, but he'll find it or something better. We can't part with him,
and he has promised Dawson to stay. We'll utilize HIM, you may be sure."

It would seem that they did, and from certain interviews and
conversations that took place between Mr. Bent and Miss Mallory on
a later visit, it would also appear that her father had exercised
a discreet reticence in regard to a certain experiment of the young
inventor, of which he had been an accidental witness.

A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE

CHAPTER I

As Mr. Robert Rushbrook, known to an imaginative press as the "Maecenas
of the Pacific Slope," drove up to his country seat, equally referred
to as a "palatial villa," he cast a quick but practical look at the
pillared pretensions of that enormous shell of wood and paint and
plaster. The statement, also a reportorial one, that its site, the
Canyon of Los Osos, "some three years ago was disturbed only by the
passing tread of bear and wild-cat," had lost some of its freshness as a
picturesque apology, and already successive improvements on the original
building seemingly cast the older part of the structure back to a hoary
antiquity. To many it stood as a symbol of everything Robert Rushbrook
did or had done--an improvement of all previous performances; it was
like his own life--an exciting though irritating state of transition to
something better. Yet the visible architectural result, as here shown,
was scarcely harmonious; indeed, some of his friends--and Maecenas had
many--professed to classify the various improvements by the successive
fortunate ventures in their owner's financial career, which had led
to new additions, under the names, of "The Comstock Lode Period," "The
Union Pacific Renaissance," "The Grea