o have others
get hold of some, especially when he would be regarded by them as the
benefactor who had given them the golden opportunity. He would reap the
major harvest, and success would open up the way for other
fields--perhaps in oil. Keith had some associates who rather scoffed at
his gold-mining promotion as out-of-date. Oil was quicker, more in the
public eye. Every time the price of gasoline or kerosene went up the
American automobile-owning public thought of oil, they were primed
perpetually toward its possibilities.

But Keith was still in gold. He knew all the technique of that branch of
speculation and Blake's campaign was carried out most successfully. Mrs.
Keith descended overwhelmingly upon Molly at her school, chauffeur and
footman on the driving seat of her luxurious sedan; gasped a little when
she saw that Molly was a beauty, could be made an unusual one with the
right dressing, the right setting.

Her brain, which was keen enough in business matters, told her that she
could improve her husband's program of using Molly as an attraction to
bring investors to the Keith residence. It might be a good thing--Mrs.
Keith was quick at dealing with the future--if her son, Donald, fell in
love with Molly, the heiress. She wrote to the Three Star Ranch, to
Sandy Bourke, guardian of Molly Casey, without Molly's knowledge. Sandy
read the letter aloud to his partners.

DEAR MR. BOURKE:

I feel that I should write this letter to you although I have
never met you, rather than my husband, since the question is
one that a woman can handle better than a man,--that only a
woman can understand and appreciate.

I have seen your Molly and she has entirely captivated me.
She is really wonderful, with wonderful possibilities. She is
more than pretty, she is talented and she possesses character
in a marked degree that sets her aside from the rest. It is
this difference, this broadness of view, perhaps a certain
intolerance of conventionality, that make me feel that, much
as it has done for her, and that has been largely due to her
own endeavors, this school, or any school, is not the place
for her best development.

I want to take her into my home, Mr. Bourke. She is
practically a woman grown, much more so than the girls with
whom she associates. This, I suppose, is due to her early
experiences. There she would be under my own eye,