r course. He was a keen-faced, dark-eyed man, undoubtedly
a Jew; and Billy, remembering Saxon's admonition always to ask
questions, watched his opportunity and started a conversation. It took
but a little while to learn that Gunston was a commission merchant, and
to realize that the content of his talk was too valuable for Saxon to
lose. Promptly, when he saw that the other's cigar was finished, Billy
invited him into the next car to meet Saxon. Billy would have been
incapable of such an act prior to his sojourn in Carmel. That much at
least he had acquired of social facility.

"He's just teen tellin' me about the potato kings, and I wanted him to
tell you," Billy explained to Saxon after the introduction. "Go on and
tell her, Mr. Gunston, about that fan tan sucker that made nineteen
thousan' last year in celery an' asparagus."

"I was just telling your husband about the way the Chinese make things
go up the San Joaquin river. It would be worth your while to go up there
and look around. It's the good season now--too early for mosquitoes.
You can get off the train at Black Diamond or Antioch and travel around
among the big farming islands on the steamers and launches. The fares
are cheap, and you'll find some of those big gasoline boats, like the
Duchess and Princess, more like big steamboats."

"Tell her about Chow Lam," Billy urged.

The commission merchant leaned back and laughed.

"Chow Lam, several years ago, was a broken-down fan tan player. He
hadn't a cent, and his health was going back on him. He had worn out
his back with twenty years' work in the gold mines, washing over the
tailings of the early miners. And whatever he'd made he'd lost at
gambling. Also, he was in debt three hundred dollars to the Six
Companies--you know, they're Chinese affairs. And, remember, this was
only seven years ago--health breaking down, three hundred in debt, and
no trade. Chow Lam blew into Stockton and got a job on the peat lands at
day's wages. It was a Chinese company, down on Middle River, that farmed
celery and asparagus. This was when he got onto himself and took stock
of himself. A quarter of a century in the United States, back not so
strong as it used to was, and not a penny laid by for his return to
China. He saw how the Chinese in the company had done it--saved their
wages and bought a share.

"He saved his wages for two years, and bought one share in a
thirty-share company. That was only five years ago. They lease