branch from the
Divide Railroad goes there straight to the hotel at Hymettus."

"Where?" said Demorest, with a puzzled smile.

"Hymettus. That's the fancy name they've given to the watering-place on
the slope. But I reckon you're a stranger here?"

"For five years," said Demorest. "I fancy I've heard of the railroad,
although I prefer to go to Heavy Tree this way. But I never heard of a
watering-place there before."

"Why, it's the biggest boom of the year. Folks that are tired of the
fogs of 'Frisco and the heat of Sacramento all go there. It's four
thousand feet up, with a hotel like Saratoga, dancing, and a band plays
every night. And it all sprang out of the Divide Railroad and a crank
named George Barker, who bought up some old Ditch property and ran a
branch line along its levels, and made a junction with the Divide. You
can come all the way from 'Frisco or Sacramento by rail. It's a mighty
big thing!"

"Yet," said Demorest, with some animation, "you call the man who
originated this success a crank. I should say he was a genius."

The other passenger shook his head. "All sheer nigger luck. He bought
the Ditch plant afore there was a ghost of a chance for the Divide
Railroad, just out o' pure d----d foolishness. He expected so little
from it that he hadn't even got the agreement done in writin', and
hadn't paid for it, when the Divide Railroad passed the legislature, as
it never oughter done! For, you see, the blamedest cur'ous thing about
the whole affair was that this 'straw' road of a Divide, all pure
wildcat, was only gotten up to frighten the Pacific Railroad sharps into
buying it up. And the road that nobody ever calculated would ever have a
rail of it laid was pushed on as soon as folks knew that the Ditch plant
had been bought up, for they thought there was a big thing behind it.
Even the hotel was, at first, simply a kind of genteel alms-house that
this yer Barker had built for broken-down miners!"

"Nevertheless," continued Demorest, smiling, "you admit that it is a
great success?"

"Yes," said the other, a little irritated by some complacency in
Demorest's smile, "but the success isn't HIS'N. Fools has ideas, and
wise men profit by them, for that hotel now has Jim Stacy's bank behind
it, and is even a kind of country branch of the Brook House in 'Frisco.
Barker's out of it, I reckon. Anyhow, HE couldn't run a hotel, for all
that his wife--she that's one of the big 'Frisco swells now--used to
he