future of more promise still, I
went on my way with no special anxiety. But who can trust a silver mine?
At the very point where we expected the greatest result, the vein
suddenly gave out, and nothing prevented the stock from falling utterly
flat on the market, but the discretion of my agent, who kept the fact a
secret, while he quietly went about getting another portion of the mine
into working order. He was fast succeeding in this, and affairs were
looking daily more promising, when suddenly an intimation received by me
in a bit of conversation casually overheard at that reception we
attended together, convinced me that the secret was transpiring, and
that if great care were not taken, we should be swamped before we could
get things into working trim again. Filled with this anxiety, I was
about to leave the building, in order to telegraph to my agent, when to
my great surprise the card of that very person was brought in to me,
together with a request for an immediate interview. You remember it,
Paula, and how I went out to see him; but what you did not know then,
and what I find some difficulty in relating now, is that his message to
me was one of total ruin unless I could manage to give into his hand,
for immediate use, the sum of a hundred thousand dollars.

"The facts making this demand necessary were not what you may have been
led to expect. They had little or nothing to do with the new operations,
which were progressing successfully and with every promise of an
immediate return, but arose entirely out of a law-suit then in the hands
of a Colorado judge for decision, and which, though it involved
well-nigh the whole interest of the mine, had never till this hour given
me the least uneasiness, my lawyers having always assured me of my
ultimate success. But it seems that notwithstanding all this, the
decision was to be rendered in favor of the other party. My agent, who
was a man to be trusted in these matters, averred that five days before,
he had learned from most authentic sources what the decision was likely
to be. That the judge's opinion had been seen--he did not tell me how,
he dared not, nor did I presume to question, but I have since learned
that not only had the copyist employed by the judge turned traitor, but
that my own agent had been anything but scrupulous in the use he had
made of a willing and corruptible instrument--and that if I wanted to
save myself and the others connected with me from total an